Native plants, lots of patience: How a Stearns County couple restored a damaged lakeshore

Mary and Richard Gallea can still remember the former owner of their lakeside cabin telling them he spent six or seven hours a week mowing the lawn.

The Galleas understood quickly that wouldn’t work for them. They’d bought the cabin on Great Northern Lake as a weekend getaway and had zero interest in cutting more grass.

“For a weekend guy, that was like, ‘Nope,’” Richard Gallea recalled.

So, the next question was what do you do with all that lawn? The answer came when they applied for a permit to replace a crumbling retaining wall, and a Stearns County official asked if they’d ever thought about restoring their lakeshore to a more natural state.

Twenty years later, the Galleas’ property is a lush sweep of native plants that help slow and absorb water running off the house and driveway, keeping phosphorus and other pollutants out of the lake. A few mowed paths remain, but they take only about 45 minutes to cut. 

It’s the kind of transformation environmentalists say is vital to saving Minnesota’s impaired lakeshores. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources estimates nearly half the state’s natural shorelines are gone.

Observers say much of that loss is due to the building of large homes with manicured lawns, patios, rock riprap and trees cleared to provide a better view of the water — a suburbanization of lake life that took hold over the past few decades and is polluting many lakes.

As the Galleas showed, the damage can be repaired, but it takes time for the efforts to fully bloom. It also requires the will to do it.

“A lot of people, frankly, their ideal vision of shoreline property is Pebble Beach,” Richard Gallea said, referring to the famed California golf course on the Pacific Ocean. “It’s a mowed golf course-quality lawn, a fire pit right down on shore, which always makes me cringe.”

‘What can I do about this?’

When the Galleas decided to go natural, they hired a landscaping company in 2006 to remove the retaining wall built from old railroad ties, restore their lakeshore’s original slope, and fill it with native plants. 

“It was kind of exciting, because we got a list of plants that we could choose from,” Mary Gallea said.

They made some rookie mistakes the first few years. They overwatered the drought-tolerant plants and sometimes struggled to distinguish native plants from invasive weeds. But they kept expanding their native plantings, which now encompass almost their entire property.

Now, their yard is covered with flowering plants and prairie grasses that explode with color and change with the seasons. In 2015, they retired to their lake place year-round and spend time puttering in the gardens and taking evening walks along the winding paths.

“The birds are very happy,” Mary Gallea said. “We’ve got lots of pollinators. We grow milkweed. We’ve got monarch butterflies and lots of bees. So there are a lot more benefits to it than not.”

The Galleas are fierce advocates now for natural shorelines. Mary Gallea became a master gardener. Richard Gallea is active in the Sauk River Chain of Lakes Association and tries to convince others to follow their lead. He’s had mixed success.

He said he tries to help homeowners see how what they do on their shoreline impacts the health of the lake, including nutrient runoff, water quality and algae growth.

“They don’t always make that connection between the choices they’re making on shore and that” pollution, he said. “And that’s where we can jump in and try to connect that dot.”

Most restoration efforts are less ambitious than the Galleas’, said Greg Berg, a shoreland specialist with the Stearns County Soil and Water Conservation District. But combined, they have helped improve the water quality of the Sauk River Chain of Lakes, he said.

Many people think what they do with their small lot doesn’t matter to the lake’s overall health, Berg said, but the nutrient runoff from all those properties adds up.

“It’s cumulative, and it makes a difference,” he said.

Native plants also provide critical habitat for pollinators and other species. And their deeper roots help hold the soil in place, and reduce erosion — a problem that gets homeowners’ attention, Berg said.

“People start to lose their land, and that’s value to them. That’s tax dollars they’re paying on that property,” Berg said. “That’s where they maybe will call me and say, ‘What can I do about this?’”

Not everyone’s a convert

Cost-share funding for homeowners who want to restore shoreland is available from soil and water conservation districts in most Minnesota counties, usually passed down from the state Board of Water and Soil Resources. Some watershed districts and lake associations also offer financial help.

The Stearns County Soil and Water Conservation District paid 75 percent of the $24,000 cost of the Galleas’ restoration project, leaving them to pay just $6,000.

Since the Galleas’ restoration, Stearns County has added a requirement that owners who receive funding for a project must agree to a permanent deed restriction, to ensure that the natural shoreline remains intact. Not many other Minnesota counties have that requirement, Berg said.

After a project is complete, Berg said his staff checks on the property periodically to answer questions and help the homeowners with any issues. Usually they’re satisfied with the results, he said.

“There’s very few that we hear grumbling from,” Berg said. “I would say that it’s probably the first couple of years, just getting on top of it and keeping the weeds at bay. But beyond that, once it establishes, that’s OK.”

The Galleas used both native seeds and plant seedlings, known as plugs. A restoration project can be successful using either one, although the seedlings will bloom faster, Berg said. 

“We generally put some plugs into the plantings in the areas where it’s going to be the most visual, so people get more instant gratification,” he said. “Then if somebody comes by or a friend is over, they might not ask quite as strongly, ‘What did you do to your place?’”

Not everyone on Great Northern Lake shares the Galleas’ perspective. Two houses down, the shoreline is a stark contrast, lined with a manicured lawn and rock retaining wall.

Richard Gallea described the varied reactions of people who cruise by their place in a boat.

“I’d say half of them, or two-thirds maybe, are captivated by what they see,” he said. “The other third are kind of like, ‘What a sloppy shoreline that is.’”

On the other hand, people who drive or walk by often ask if they can see their yard. And the Galleas have hosted tours of their property for hundreds of people interested in shoreline restoration.

“People are intrigued by it,” Mary Gallea said. “Some might be turned off by it. But it takes all kinds.”

Just like growing native plants, the couple says changing people’s attitudes toward natural lakeshore takes time. They plan to keep spreading the message that native landscaping is good for lakes.

“We’re pretty evangelical about it,” Richard Gallea said.

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