KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) -- After much planning in the winter months, Helping Nature Heal and Ecology Action Centre have helped rehabilitate a piece of the Halifax city shoreline. And when seventy people show up to transform a piece of landscape, amazing things can happen.

“Everyone followed through, there were no glitches,” says Rosmarie Lohnes of Helping Nature Heal who lead the St. Mary's Boat Club transformation on the gorgeous May 24th afternoon.

St. Mary's Boat Club has, over the years, experienced extensive damage from both street and land run-off and tidal erosion. Working with dozens of local volunteers, both organizations came together to transform the site into a vibrant space for public use. A secondary aim was to help turn the park into a self-sustaining system.

Team member Kirsten Busche worked with volunteers at the different stations around the site, both supervising volunteers and staff but also educating them on the different techniques they were using to help slow erosion.

Whether it was helping with the gardening, learning more about shoreline erosion or creating a more vibrant space, everyone had their own reason for helping out.

“It was a mixture of parents with small children who wanted to be on the beach and be a part of something really cool and then there were people who had a personal vested interest in learning something they could take home with them,” says Busche.

The many volunteers, the youngest around five years old, came out to help create a healthy shoreline using a variety of natural elements, from new trees, shrubs and flowers to brush, mulch and sod.

The techniques that Lohnes and her team use are unique to Helping Nature Heal and have a proven track record in countering tidal erosion. Technique such as holding leaf mulch in place behind a system of bales using woven spruce, pine and fir branches keeps nutrient rich mulch in place during Nova Scotia's more violent weather events.

The site itself was picked because of the erosion that as already happened along the embankment going from the shore to the park. Coastal Adaptation Coordinator Robin Tress with Ecology Action Centre says stopping erosion is unrealistic. The Living Shorelines Project is trying to slow erosion down.

“To stop erosion is to disrupt ecosystem development and that's not what we are trying to do,” says Robin Tress of the Ecology Action Centre. “We're just trying to replicate real ecosystems that would exist without massive human inputs and impacts.”

The St. Mary's Boat Club is classified as a 'low action area', as it is sheltered from more extreme wave actions. Lohnes is confident, however, that the techniques her and her team have developed are applicable even in the most extreme conditions. With hurricane season right around the corner, Lohnes says completing the St. Mary's Boat Club project now gives their work time to take hold.

“In three or four different ways we've ensured the protection and the strength of our system to really thrive and to be really resilient to change.”

Previously, with frequent mowing and human incursion too close to the shoreline, the adjacent ground had become so compact that the soil was not absorbing any rain water. Run-off was becoming a real issues, and it was also not allowing a natural transition from a mowed open space to the tree line.

Deciding where city workers needed to stop mowing and adding a more layered variety of plant life was the most important part of the project since that has the biggest impact on overland flow.

With backing and support from scientists at Saint Mary's University and Dalhousie University, Lohnes felt confident in presenting her findings and recommendations to Halifax municipal staff.

“It was great for us to have the science behind it to be able to converse with [the representative with the city] in a scientific way and make [them] understand what the processes were so we could get on with the work.”

Work along the shoreline was the next important step in slowing erosion. The project included staking into place 100 bales of hay just above the high tide line. A variety of grasses and willow trees were planted above the protection of these hay bales.

“We used these plants specifically because they have intense root systems and they work well together because they partner under the soil and create a caging affect. Their roots are widespread and aggressive and they attach to each other.”

With the roots holding the soil in place, Lohnes says this helps the embankment from collapsing.

Along with leaving trees and flowers to their own reproductive devices, the hay bales and bags of mulch also carry seeds for a variety of plants that naturally grow in St. Mary's Boat Club's ecosystem.

Lohnes calls this strategic composting, providing the seeds everything they need to grow, like water, nutrients and protection from wind and waves.

“The hay bale acts like a big sponge...as soon as it soaks up the next rain, they start to grow and decompose... So all of those seeds that were locked in the hay bale now have the potential to grow.”

Further up from the embankment, a ditch was dug and filled in with a wood fiber mulch. This was put in place in order to mitigate road water run-off coming down the hill that abuts the St. Mary's Boat Club.

Around the park area, berry bushes, shrubs, perennials, trees and an open field now creates a new, more inviting space for human and pet traffic. Using clear mulch lines, the city will only mow what they need to make the park look tidy. Beyond that the natural side of the park is left to its own devices.

“As the tree [and plants] mature, and throw out seeds, we'll have tonnes of little trees growing,” says Lohnes. “We're stimulating this potential for it to become really sustainable and self sufficient over time.”

Lohnes and her team will check on the park in a month to see if any of the plants needs a little more care but in Lohnes experience, things should be soon thriving on their own in rehabilitated the St. Mary's Boat Club.