On Tuesday, July 17, the Town of Fenwick Island hosted their second annual Fenwick Nurtures Nature event at Fenwick Island Town Hall. The event this year featured guest speakers on various aspects of the coastal ecosystem that humans and nature share, as well as how people can best support and maintain the environment.

While they all had their respective areas of expertise within topic of preserving nature, all of the speakers highlighted the importance of protecting the environment and the global impact that properly maintaining just one piece of land can have on society — especially in light of climate change and the kind of widespread flooding that the region has experienced recently.

Deborah Cowell, a member of the Green Infrastructure Working Group for the Town of Fenwick Island, started the town council presentation by thanking Council Member Janice Bortner — who leads the Residential Concerns Committee — for organizing the event, and asked the attendees to take a moment to recognize that this was the last large event for Bortner as a council member.

Bortner said she was enthusiastic about the speakers, adding, “The environment is where we all meet and where we all have a mutual interest.”

The first speaker, Steven Pryce Lea —director of horticulture at the Delaware Botanic Gardens — echoed the sentiment and explained that people all have an important role in conserving the environment.

“The power of native planting and how together we can restore nature at one patch at a time,” he said, is something that inspires him and others to give back to the environment.

Lea noted that he spent his childhood growing up in Wales, in the United Kingdom, and how he realized that nature can thrive when people work with it instead of working against it. He gave an example of how that idea works with local shorelines — protecting both property and the sand dunes and diverse ecosystems that are found on the local beaches and waterways.

To maintain these areas and other aspects of a property, he said, it is important to choose native plants, because they are “about rebuilding relationships between us and our home ecosystems.” Lea said “wild succession zones” — places with inviting spaces for pollinators — are tremendously important to the ecosystem and can easily be added into small spaces of land, such as the space between a parking lot and a sidewalk, or the space between a driveway and a neighbor’s driveway.

Lea spent the majority of his presentation explaining the overall importance of layered landscapes that can feature a variety of plantings to support animals and the environment. He said many local plants have root strength that can protect the ecosystem during storms.

“Season by season, the land will become more resilient, more fertile and more alive.”

Those plants are referred to as “keystone shrubs,” and those native to the Delmarva region include beach plums, coastal bayberry, arrowwood viburnum and highbush blueberry. He said it is important to choose plants that are appropriate for the geographic location they are being planted in — and that these plants are more specially adapted to the coastal Delaware area. Four keystone tree species in the area, he said, are swamp white oak, American holly, loblolly pine and sweetbay magnolia. He said planting just one tree supports hundreds of native insects, birds and other types of wildlife.

Lea said layering leads to “shade, structure and sustenance” within a property. He said property owners should choose as many native plants as possible, but that they can plant non-native bushes or trees — so long as they ensure those non-native species are surrounded by local plantings.

“Start small by replacing one patch of lawn with native plants,” he suggested. “Share your garden with your neighbors. Let your neighbors know, because odds are you will be sharing some of those plants.”

While not everyone has enough space to grow a garden or to plant trees on their own property, Lea said volunteering at the Delaware Botanic Gardens can also be beneficial to improving the environment.

“Restoration is a shared journey,” he said. “Come and meet our garden stewards and volunteers, and together we can create change through participation, not through perfection.”

Richard Pratt, a Delaware Urban Forestry associate, continued the theme of shade and communal park spaces by stating that attendees would all be on the beach or “sitting under the shade of a tree on a lawn chair if we weren’t here today.”

He explained that Fenwick Island was created in 1893, when many cottages were being built around the trees on the island. Pratt described the modern-day importance of the few remaining trees on the island and how the Faucett Okie family nature preserve, on Coastal Highway and East Bayard Street in Fenwick, “represents a place that we can all go to forget about things.”

He said the preserve is the “path to serenity” and encouraged individuals to stop and touch a tree.

“A forest starts with one tree, and you can start with one tree,” he said.

Carol Anderson-Austra — a landscape architect — also described the preserve and the logistical aspects of creating it. The two lots, she said, were donated by Austin Oakie and needed better access and to be cleared of trash. She said she and others had to observe water flow on the site to determine the best way to create a nature preserve there.

Also important, she said, was preserving some of the oldest trees found in Fenwick, located within the preserve.

“Plants thrive in certain locations,” she said, describing how they wanted to choose plants that will do better in specific locations on the two lots.

Anderson-Austra said the location now serves as a natural gathering space and that it was “just the beginning of this nature preserve.” She described the trees of the preserve as the ceiling, the shrubs as the furniture and the leaves as the carpet. She said the preserve “provides an example and inspiration for things that you can do in your own yard.”

The next speaker was Blake Moore, a master naturalist from the University of Delaware Cooperative Extension, Horticulture & Natural Resources, who shared his advice on how to protect yards and other spaces from invasive species.

Those invasive species can be plants, animals or pathogens that are typically not found in that particular geographic region. Moore said having such species take hold can lead to serious ecological harm to the local environment.

“Invasive plants do not support as many insects, which in turn provides less food for birds and mammals.”

He said ecosystems struggle to evolve and that the process takes an immense amount of time, which leads to entire parts of the ecosystem occasionally being decimated by invasive species.

To solve this problem, Moore said, local, state and federal levels of government are “doing control and containment strategies to prevent the spread of invasive species.” Non-governmental organizations and other non-profits, he said, are helping with the effort. He also emphasized the importance of volunteering.

DNREC, he noted, has added a website reporting tool that can allow boaters and other individuals to help officials locate and identify invasive species, such as the blue catfish and snakeheads, which are detrimental to local wildlife.

Tripp Colonell of Brother Nature Landscaping circled back to the topic of floodwater management and continued the town council presentation with an idea on how to best handle the issue. A rock garden, he said, is a good idea for where to store water, especially when water can easily be pushed into neighboring properties.

Krista De Cooke, strategic partnership and science lead at Homegrown National Park, expanded on that idea. There are more than 135 million acres of typical residential landscapes across the U.S., she said.

“We often think of development as progress, but without environmental consideration, things go wrong. … Every property is a part of a larger ecosystem,” she said. “You are not just managing your yard — you are managing a part of the planet.”

Cooke said even small portions of property being transformed into more environmentally friendly areas can have an impact on nature. She reminded attendees that the amount of lawn they have will determine whether rain is able to be absorbed by the grass or if it will become stormwater runoff and “whether you are adding nitrogen, phosphorous, herbicides or insecticides to your local watershed” — which are all extremely harmful to ecosystems.

“We must appreciate the ecological value of leaves,” she said, noting that removing fallen leaves can negatively impact the environment.

Leaves protect soil moisture, recycle soil nutrients and create habitats for various animal species, she said.

Cook said removing light pollution can help to keep insects alive, which allows animals to survive, and she suggested switching to motion-sensor lights or yellow lightbulbs to reduce the number of insects killed by light.

Cooke and the other presenters all recognized the power of individuals when they come together to protect the environment. She ended the presentation by stating, “Spreading the word is just as critical as planting itself.”

The Town of Fenwick Island is hosting a second Fenwick Nurtures Nature event later this summer, focused on the Dark Skies initiative and the importance of reducing light pollution. The event will take place on Aug. 5 from 9 a.m. until noon, and will feature guest speakers including keynote speaker Ruskin Hartley, the CEO of DarkSky International.