Delaware Botanic Gardens shoreline stabilizing project complete
With the completion of an observation deck overlooking Pepper Creek, a shoreline stabilization project at Delaware Botanic Gardens has been finalized.
Staff from Delaware Botanic Gardens and the Center for the Inland Bays began working on the project in the spring. Volunteers also played an important part in completing the project, which was done in early November.
The Delaware Botanic Gardens is a 37-acre plot of land that sits northeast of Dagsboro on Pepper Creek. It opened to the public in September 2019 and features a number of natural environments – a meadow created by famed Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, a woodlands trail, freshwater wetlands and tidal wetlands. Plans call for the creation of a freshwater pond in the future.
Accessed by the Woodland Gardens trail, the recently completed stabilization project includes an anchored-branch toe more than 300 feet long acting as a wave attenuation device, and thousands of grass plantings along the gardens’ shoreline. Except for observation deck materials and a few fasteners in the anchored-branch toe, the materials for the project were found almost entirely on site.
Sheryl Swed, Delaware Botanic Gardens executive director, said there is still an opportunity to have the observation deck named in someone’s honor.
“We hope that someone in the community will be interested in naming rights to the observation deck, one of the most beautiful features of Delaware Botanic Gardens,” said Swed.
For more information on the Delaware Botanic Gardens, go to delawaregardens.org.
For more information on the naming opportunity for the observation deck, contact Swed at sherylswed@delawaregardens.org or call 202-262-9856.
Chris Flood has been working for the Cape Gazette since early 2014. He currently covers Rehoboth Beach and Henlopen Acres, but has also covered Dewey Beach and the state government. He covers environmental stories, business stories and random stories on subjects he finds interesting, and he also writes a column called Choppin’ Wood that runs every other week. Additionally, Flood moonlights as the company’s circulation manager, which primarily means fixing boxes that are jammed with coins during daylight hours, but sometimes means delivering papers in the middle of the night. He’s a graduate of the University of Maine and the Landing School of Boat Building & Design.
