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In Your Community

Communities working together for the Bays

If you have a Homeowners Association (HOA) or neighbors who want to work together to protect and restore our bays, you can make a big difference.

Things your community can do:

  1. Manage your “common ground” open space in a bay-friendly way. Limit use of fertilizers and pesticides, leave grass clippings on the ground as a slow release fertilizer.  Plant native shrubs and trees. Plant or maintain adequate buffers of trees, shrubs and grasses between lawn and streams, bay or wetlands.
  2. If stormwater is draining off driveways and streets and flowing into storm drains or directly into the Bays, encourage residents to create rain gardens to capture their rain before it runs into the street. Consider creating rain garden swales to capture and process some of the stormwater from paved surfaces in the neighborhood. Click here to learn all about how to plant a rain garden.
  3. Many communities have stormwater retention ponds. Create a planted buffer around the pond with native trees, shrubs and flowers. It will help filter nutrients coming off the lawn and keep them out of the pond, and it will attract native birds and butterflies.
  4. If your community is right on one of the Bays, protect your shoreline habitats; avoid ‘hardening” the shoreline with bulkheads and rip-rap…this destroys critical habitat for many Inland Bays species including horseshoe crabs and diamondback terrapins. Living Shorelines
  5. Invite us to your next community meeting!  Let us show you how we can work together for the Inland Bays.   Contact us and let us know of your interest.  We can bring you up to speed on the ‘State of the Bays’…we can show you how rain gardens can help your community and help the Bays…or we can fill you in on citizen science projects and volunteers opportunities.  Contact outreach@inlandbays.org to schedule a speaker for your meeting.

Did You Know

DID YOU KNOW?

A house with a 2,000 square-foot roof yields 600 gallons of water from a 1-inch rainstorm?

Take Action

TAKE ACTION

So Many Ways to Help the Bays

You’re Invited!

YOU'RE INVITED!

Join us for these upcoming events.

     
    • Millsboro Rain Garden Planting and Workshop
      10:00 am - May 21, 2013
    • STAC Meeting
      9:00 am - June 7, 2013
    • 9th Annual Inland Bays Clean Up
      9:00 am - June 8, 2013
    • 1st Annual Rock & Row Recycling Regatta
      2:00 pm - June 13, 2013
    • Bethany Beach Nature Center
      N/A - June 16, 2013