Ecological landscape designer Rebecca Jacobs created a living wall along the shore of a Nickerson Lake home, Friday, in New Limerick, demonstrating an alternative way to prevent erosion using plants, logs, live stakes and existing rock.
About 16 people attended the three-hour workshop, including six environmental protection department interns, an Aroostook master gardener and an Orono Public Works staffer who has been restoring the shoreline at Webster Park and the river trail.
“We’re trying to get the natural stuff to grow back,” said Larry Bruen about the Orono effort. “It’s natural erosion control. I wanted to come here to see and learn more about it. And now I know the reasons why.”
Bruen said they used to just mow Webster Park, but it is well used and they wanted to do something to stop the erosion.
“People go down to the river, and the more they go down the more it washes away the bank,” he said.
Environmental protection scientists are learning that these “living shorelines” grow stronger over time and “can be more sustainable in the long run than seawalls or rip-rap revetments alone,” according to a Maine Department of Environmental Protection draft report on nature-based stabilization.
“In the past, the standard has been to install rock riprap, which can have negative effects on a lake’s ecosystem, including heating water temperatures up and reducing food for aquatic life,” said Angie Wotton, manager of the Houlton-based Southern Aroostook Soil and Water Conservation District.
Last year, Maine regulators passed new rules that place restrictions on riprap and other hardened structures. Instead, they offered landowners expedited permitting for the creation of living shorelines that use existing materials like logs, rocks, root wads and dead tree limbs.
The conservation district received a grant from the 2026 Friends of National Association of Conservation Districts to hold Friday’s demonstration, which was presented in partnership with the Nickerson Lake Wilderness Preservation board.
At Friday’s workshop, attendees first watched Jacobs and Wotton install rocks and logs along a section of shoreline that was in danger of further erosion. After getting the idea, they carried rocks, logs and stakes to the water’s edge, and also planted erosion control plants such as Solomon’s Seal, Bar Harbor juniper, low ground evergreen cover, various species of native roses, northern bush honeysuckle and black-eyed Susans to name a few.
“Since they changed the shoreline stabilization rules, we’ve been training to learn the new rules,” said DEP intern Cole Bruen, who was digging a hole to plant a honeysuckle bush. “It’s nice to see it today in practice.”
Cole Bruen, who is Larry’s son, said the only natural stabilization project he had seen was a much larger one along the ocean shoreline in Blue Hill. Seeing the lake project on Friday opened up the possibilities, he said.
“It’s nice to be aware of another person doing it and we can be like, ‘Oh, yeah, it happens on streams and lakes and ponds and it looks good,’” Cole Bruen said.
Jacobs, who is also a conservation technician with the Knox Lincoln Soil and Water Conservation District, first demonstrated how to keep a slope from further eroding, placing rocks under tree roots that are being undercut, and using plants on the shore to help with stormwater runoff.
“Having enough rock underneath combined with vegetation and other leaf matter to fill in the small [gaps] it will harden and stabilize the tree to give it that much more protection,” she said.
Jacobs placed the rocks far under the tree and packed them in with a ramrod. It takes a lot more rock than you think, she said.
After you measure it in cubic feet, get about 1.5 times more than the measurement of small, medium and large-sized rock, Jacobs said.
She was able to pull many of the rocks right from the lake.
Log sills on a slope rely on what’s already there, such as exposed tree roots, and work with the existing topography as much as possible. Virginia creeper was growing along the slope and Jacobs carefully removed it to replant it after the logs were placed.
Work it a section at a time, she said.
“Don’t try to reshape the slope in a linear way, go this way and that way,” Jacobs said.
A dead cedar tree was regrowing, and she worked around it and its exposed roots to place the stabilizing logs.
After placing a log, she added stakes that could be small trees under the logs for additional strength. The stakes will eventually get cut to the exterior of the log.
The spaces between the logs and root wads are perfect for planting vegetation, she said.
“These are nature-based solutions,” Jacobs said. “We are trying to mimic nature in a thoughtful ecological way.”
