A double restoration
St. Luke’s Restoration of Nature in Eastport offers a restoring of the soul and the land
There are short walks nearby that go a long way toward restoring the soul, and the one at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Eastport has the double bonus of also restoring nature.
Up until about three years ago, the little church’s 5-acre site was a tangle of invasive vines with a buried storm pipe that spewed runoff directly into Back Creek. Now there’s a new quartermile-long stream that drains 28 acres of the surrounding neighborhood and cleanses the water before it reaches a marsh at the edge of the creek. Paths wander through 125,000 square feet of native plantings from Bay Ridge Avenue all the way down to the marsh.
This past weekend, Millie the rescue retriever and I attended a blessing of the animals at the church’s outdoor amphitheater. The Rev. Diana Carroll led the service. She sprinkled each pet with holy water flicked from a sprig of willow and laid a loving hand on each furry brow. Millie liked that. Of course, she likes any attention she can get, but this seemed special to her. I hadn’t been to the church grounds in some time, and I was so taken by the lush flourishing of all the native wildflowers that I had to go find my emotional support spouse Louise to join me for a walk through the site.
She was just as charmed as I was.
“This is the kind of place I would have loved to explore when I was a little girl,” she said. “We’d build forts and find secret spots to hide.”
Louise had her wildflower book in hand, and I had the iNaturalist app open on my phone. We started with the little yellow flowers on their towering stalks in the beds surrounding the labyrinth up near the roadway. They looked like black-eyed Susans — only they were nine feet tall — and the app identified them as narrowleaf sunflowers, a new one for both of us. These beauties, like most of the native plants at this site, are meant to attract pollinators — bees, moths, butterflies and hummingbirds.
We headed down into the shade of the woods, a mix of red maples, sassafras and sweetgums along with some saplings of catalpa, pawpaw and yellow poplar and a few bird cherry trees. There we discovered low-growing blossoms, American asters with their delicate violet petals and yellow centers, and an elaborate speckled yellow flower — spotted horse mint — that looked like it could take on any orchid in a beauty contest and win.
While the coneflowers had shriveled and blackened, we were amazed that so many of the other flowers were still in such lovely bloom in the first week of October. And there were brilliantly colored berries, like the appropriately named purple beautyberry.
We made it down to the edge of the creek in a little cove between the Watergate apartments and the Severn House condo complex. The stream ends in a 320-foot-wide living shoreline planted with native cattails and marsh grasses. Living shorelines are meant to replicate the natural buffer of a marsh, which both filters stormwater coming off the land before it reaches the creek and protects the shoreline from erosion caused by boat wakes, windblown waves and storm surges. The protective rock barriers have gaps between them to allow critters like terrapins and horseshoe crabs to get in and out of the water.
Millie took in the scene while perched on a large sandstone boulder. I recalled coming to this very spot in 2018, just after the construction of the project had been completed, but before all of the vegetation had been planted. There was a heavy storm that afternoon, and I had donned my foulweather gear, from my white rubber
with sediment and road pollution, but the step pools, large bioswales, cobble riffles and log weirs slowed the runoff, allowed the debris to settle into the gravel beds and gave it time to cool, and the water flowing into the creek was clear as moonshine in a Mason jar.
I looked up and gazed through the downpour at the other side of the creek, where I was surprised to see a figure standing there in a red rain suit. It turned out to be my friend Elvia Thompson, co-founder of the Annapolis Green environmental organization. She had come to see the project in action, too. We were both impressed.
The $1.5 million restoration project started in 2013 when Pastor Diana and parishioner Betsy Love started building partnerships with the Anne Arundel Watershed Stewards Academy and RiverWise Congregations.
Funds for the initial design and permitting came from RiverWise Congregations, Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake, the Watershed Stewards Academy, Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Chesapeake Bay Trust.
Funding for the construction was provided by the Department of Natural Resources and the Atlantic Coastal Bays Trust Fund, while the Episcopal Church’s United Thank Offering funded the amphitheater and other environmental literacy features on the grounds. A Chesapeake Bay Trust Watershed Assistance Grant Program award covered additional costs for the design and permitting. The Annapolis-based Underwood & Associates constructed the project.
Curiously, the offices of the Chesapeake Bay Trust and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay are located just a few blocks away in Eastport. All in all, a remarkable effort spearheaded by Pastor Diana and project manager Love and supported by countless hours of volunteer manpower has resulted in this astonishing gem of a green space for all of us to enjoy.
Millie and I caught up with Louise, who had started heading back toward the church. There we found the hillside covered with a bed of tiny purple flowers shaped like bluebells. Millie seemed fascinated with these for some reason. Ironically, they turned out to be called “obedient plants” apparently because if you bend them, they’ll stay that way.
Hmm. Millie’s not always that obedient and doesn’t always stay when I tell her to stay. What would happen if I harvest a few handfuls, dry them out and sprinkle them into Millie’s kibble?
Where do you like to ramble?