‘Quit mowing’: Turning Minnesota lake homeowners into shoreline stewards, one lawn at a time
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When a quiz popped up in Dorothy Whitmer’s email inbox in 2016 asking her to score the quality of her lakeshore property, she jumped at the chance.
“I was so excited, because I said, ‘Oh, I have this great property, and it's going to get a high rating,’” said Whitmer, 71, a retired physician who’s owned a scenic spot on Gull Lake in the Brainerd Lakes region for 34 years.
She answered a series of questions: How much of her property is covered with native vegetation, and how much is mowed lawn? How much is covered by hard surfaces, like buildings, patios and driveways? Does she use fertilizer or pesticides?
To her surprise, Whitmer failed the test.
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“It was a disaster,” she recalled. “So over the next three years, I kind of fell back on that ancient wisdom: When all else fails, read the directions.”
Whitmer’s awakening spurred her into action, the kind advocates say is crucial to saving Minnesota’s lakes. Nearly half the state’s natural shorelines have been lost to suburban-style development, according to a report last year that described the ongoing loss as “alarming” and concluded “many of Minnesota’s lakes are in trouble.”
Whitmer helped launch a program on the Gull Chain of Lakes that encourages and rewards property owners who preserve or restore their natural shorelines to help keep lake pollution in check.
More broadly, it’s an effort to change Minnesotans’ attitudes toward lakeshores by engaging and educating the property owners who helped create the problem. Supporters say many homeowners simply aren’t aware of the devastating effects a heavily altered shoreline can have on the lake’s health and water quality.
“What is good for the lakes actually saves money and effort, and it’s highly rewarding,” Whitmer said. “It could be summarized in two words: Quit mowing.”
Pushing back on a ‘neat and tidy’ culture
After failing the lakeshore environment quiz in 2016, Whitmer started digging into the research. She learned about the importance of keeping the shoreline natural to keep the lake healthy, and that perfectly manicured and fertilized lawns contribute to phosphorus pollution, which spurs algae growth.
Whitmer pitched an idea to the Gull Chain of Lakes Association to send a short survey to its members, then have volunteers visit their properties. If they pass — or after the owners restore the shoreline to a natural state — they receive a sign to post on the end of their dock indicating they’re a lake steward.
“When they get the lake steward award, they know they're doing the right thing, and they're incredibly proud and grateful,” Whitmer said. “Then their sign goes up, and they influence others, especially in their neighborhood.”
Now in its sixth year, the Minnesota Lake Steward Program has 102 members on the Gull chain, and recently reached a milestone: 15 percent of the 650 property owners they contacted via email have joined.
“We thought that 15 percent is a number where, if you just get to that level, it'll jump off and kind of go viral,” Whitmer said. “And you'll get many more lake stewards after that.”
The program has spread to dozens more lakes across Minnesota. Supporters view it as part of a strategy to help change societal norms and expectations around lakeshore development, and help slow the loss of natural shoreline that protects lakes from pollution.
“What that does is it signals to other people that there's a thought behind the way the property is being managed on the lake, that there's consideration being taken for the water quality,” said Jeff Forester, executive director of Minnesota Lakes and Rivers Advocates, a nonprofit that represents lake associations and property owners. It’s helped expand the program to 39 lake associations across the state.
After one sign goes up on a lake, it’s often followed by more as other residents take notice, Forester said. “Then there’ll be a cluster of five or six or seven, as one neighbor starts asking, ‘What’s that?’”
The signs also are a way to indicate that the property owner isn’t just being lazy and avoiding mowing — that there’s a purpose for leaving the shoreline natural.
Native plants have much deeper roots than most typical lawn grass, so they help stabilize the lakeshore and prevent erosion. After a rainfall, they also absorb water running off the lawn, helping keep nutrients like phosphorus out of the lake where they can cause algae blooms.
While many lake residents believe their property should look “neat and tidy,” giving up the stress of having to meticulously mow and maintain perfect lawns lets people enjoy their property even more, Whitmer said.
“When you let things grow, you don't really miss it anymore,” she added. “That neat and tidy — that was just a lot of work. When you're neat and tidy, any little elevation of the grass, you want to run out and fix it. So this relieves you of all that worry, and you can just enjoy what you have.”
Going ‘wild and free’ to curb pollution
Across Minnesota, the trend of lakeshore development in the past few decades has been larger homes with more driveways, patios and manicured lawns. More hard surfaces and the loss of natural shoreline contribute to erosion and nutrient pollution in lakes.
Gull Lake still has relatively good water quality. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources grades it a B for lake health. But the phosphorus level is higher than it was pre-development, Whitmer said.
“So we’re moving in the wrong direction,” she said. “That’s why I think if we could get people to plant and become lake stewards, we can make the water quality sustainable.”
Lake Steward program co-chair and naturalist Kris Driessen, 69, has been a Gull Lake resident since the 1960s, when small cabins and pine trees ringed the lake.
More recently, many homeowners have installed rock boulders along the shore, which look neat but don’t filter nutrients and actually can make things worse, she said.
“It acts like a bulldozer with ice heaves,” Driessen said. “It pushes it up further, and there’s more runoff.”
Riprap also tends to be more expensive to install than natural vegetation and still requires maintenance, according to the DNR.
Driessen helps educate people about using deep-rooted native plants to help hold the soil in place, slow runoff and keep phosphorus and other nutrients from polluting the lake.
She speculates that new residents might not know about natural alternatives to riprap, which is often promoted by landscape contractors.
“It's often private companies, and that's been their way of fixing things for a long time,” Driessen said.
Landscape contractors who specialize in restoring natural lakeshores sometimes need to overcome clients’ skepticism or fears about losing their lake access or view.
“Sometimes it's all about education, letting them know that there are other options, other tools in the toolbox” besides riprap, the solution that often comes to mind, said Brad Vierkant, director of ecological projects for Sauk Rapids-based Natural Resource Services.
While in some cases rocks might be the best method to repair an eroding shore, Vierkant prefers more natural solutions, such as using logs made of coconut fiber or other biodegradable material and planting native plants to hold the soil in place.
With Driessen’s guidance, Whitmer has transformed her Gull Lake property. Mowed lawn has been replaced by thick native plants and colorful wildflowers that attract bees and butterflies.
“It's much more beautiful than it ever was, and there's more wildlife,” Whitmer said. “This morning, I took a video of a fawn nursing on my property at seven in the morning. It was just unbelievable. It’s brought me so much happiness.”
And she’s shifted her thinking about what a lake property should look like. Neat and tidy is OK — inside the house, Whitmer said. “Then, when you go outside, be wild and free.”
Funding for this series is provided in part by the Four Cedars Environmental Fund of the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation.