Native Plantings Are Replacing Lawn Along the Isles Bays

A lawn that runs all the way to the water looks crisp, but ecologically it is close to useless. Shallow grass roots do little to hold a bank, and the open turf offers almost no habitat. Along the Chain of Lakes, that turf-dominated, eroding lakeshore is precisely the target of a restoration push that is slowly trading manicured edge for something messier and far more alive.

The Trouble With Turf

The problem with grass to the waterline is that it does none of the jobs a shoreline is supposed to do. It does not slow runoff, it does not filter the sediment and nutrients that runoff carries, and its short roots let the bank slump into the lake during a hard rain. What looks tidy from a distance is, up close, an open pipe feeding pollution into the water.

That is why a state appropriation from Minnesota's Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, recommended through the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources, directed funding to the Park Board specifically to restore and enhance areas of low-habitat, eroding shoreline that drag down water quality. The money targets the worst stretches first, where the trade from turf to native plants does the most good.

What Replaces It

In place of the lawn go native sedges, grasses and flowering plants with roots that reach deep into the soil. Those roots hold the bank during storms, filter runoff before it reaches the lake and provide cover for the birds and insects that make a shoreline feel alive. The same planting that protects the water quietly rebuilds the food chain along the edge.

The approach matches the Cedar-Isles plan's stated default: stabilize the shoreline with native vegetation everywhere except the formal access points where people need to reach the water. Patch by patch, that turns the old logic inside out, asking not where to add natives but where they are genuinely not needed.

Reading the New Look

Residents sometimes mistake the taller, looser plantings for neglect. The Park Board has had to explain, more than once, that the unkempt look is the design, not a lapse in mowing, and that a bank left a little wild is doing more for the lake than any clipped lawn ever did.

A Lake That Comes Back to Life

The ecological return is quick and audible. Within a season or two, a restored bay that was silent over mowed turf begins to hum with insects and fill with birds working the new stands of sedge and flowering plants. The same deep roots that hold the bank and filter runoff feed pollinators and shelter nesting birds, so a single planting does triple duty for water, soil and wildlife at once.