As Lake Hopatcong transitioned from a summer resort destination in the early 20th century to the year-round living that dominates the lake today, traditional yard practices have been brought to its shores, inadvertently contributing to water quality issues on the lake. Conventional grass lawns extending to the lakeshore have contributed to a range of environmental challenges, including excessive plant and algal growth, shoreline erosion, loss of wildlife habitat, and increased nuisance animal presence. A simple solution to safeguard the health of Lake Hopatcong is to establish a shoreline buffer.
Installing vegetative buffers along the shoreline of Lake Hopatcong is not only a practical measure to enhance property value and aesthetics but also a vital step towards preserving water quality on New Jersey’s largest lake. By embracing native vegetation and mindful landscaping practices, homeowners can play a pivotal role in safeguarding the lake's health for future generations to enjoy. Let's protect our lake, one shoreline buffer at a time.
A shoreline buffer is an area of vegetation along the shoreline of a body of water, designed to intercept and slow stormwater runoff. These buffers can range from multi-level landscapes incorporating native trees, shrubs, perennials, and groundcover, to a simple strip of native plantings along the shoreline, to simply allowing your landscape along the shoreline to return to its natural state. Whether large or small, intricate or wild, these buffers act as a protective shield, preventing sediments, pesticides, and harmful nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen from entering the lake.
Soil Stabilization and Erosion Reduction: Vegetative buffers help stabilize soil, reducing erosion and sedimentation in the lake.
Pollutant Filtration: They act as natural filters, trapping pollutants and sediments, thereby improving water clarity and quality.
Nutrient Absorption: Buffers absorb excess nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, which are major contributors to algal blooms and water quality degradation.
Wildlife Habitat: These buffers provide essential habitat and food sources for local wildlife, fostering biodiversity.
Nuisance Species Deterrence: Canada geese love short, tender grass and avoid tall grass where predators can hide. A shoreline buffer will deter geese from your yard.
While a multi-tiered approach, including trees, shrubs, flowers, and groundcover, can greatly enhance ecological balance by mimicking natural ecosystems, even a simple vegetative strip composed of native perennials or allowing your shoreline to grow wild can effectively safeguard our lake. Ideally, the vegetation should cover at least 50-75% of your property’s lakefrontage to effectively restore ecological functions to the shoreline.
Choosing native plant species is another important part of creating a shoreline buffer. Native plants are adapted to the local environment, requiring minimal maintenance and offering numerous benefits for biodiversity and water quality.
Visit the Lake Hopatcong Foundation’s native gardens at 125 Landing Road, Landing, NJ, to learn about native plants and find inspiration. Open to the public, our gardens feature interpretive signs, walking paths, benches, and a shoreline buffer garden that demonstrates how easy it is to create a buffer along your lakefront.
Native plants naturally occur in a region and are adapted to the local environment, requiring less water, fertilizer, and maintenance. They support healthy populations of birds, bees, butterflies, and other wildlife, playing a vital role in pollination and can improve water quality by holding soil in place with their deep roots and filtering out pollution from stormwater runoff.
Advantages of native plants:
By choosing native plants, you help wildlife, create a healthier environment, and support the health of Lake Hopatcong. Plus, they are beautiful!
Native plants come in almost every size, shape, and color. You can design a native plant garden for year-round interest or create a theme garden based on form or function. Below are some native plant options to get you started, the bolded varieties are deer-resistant.
Native Plant Suggestions:
Each spring, we host a native plant sale to offer our community New Jersey native plants that support local ecosystems, enhance the health of our lake, and benefit the environment.
We source our native plants for our sale from Well-Sweep Herb Farm in Port Murray, NJ, and the Catskill Native Nursery in Kerhonkson, NY.
These are excellent resources, but you can also find native plants at many local nurseries and even online.
An invasive plant is a non-native species that spreads rapidly in a new environment, often outcompeting native plants and disrupting local ecosystems. These plants thrive in various conditions, reproduce quickly, and lack natural predators or controls in their new habitat. As a result, they can cause significant harm to the environment, economy, and even human health by reducing biodiversity, altering soil composition, and displacing native flora and fauna.
You may already know about common invaders, such as Japanese knotweed, but many popular plants still sold at garden and nursery centers are also invasive. Below is a list of plants you should avoid buying, with the worst offenders in bold: