The Newport Chapter of Surfrider Foundation, Lincoln Soil and Water Conservation District, the City of Newport and Mid-Coast watershed council embarked this winter on an Ocean Friendly Garden project for Newport City Hall. The project is well under way with planning and long overdue for Newport City Hall beautification and for needed stormwater infrastructure (which the garden will help replace!)
DIY at home
The concepts of ocean friendly gardening are simple.
Pollutants "run off" our streets, neighborhoods and landscapes, wastefully and needlessly fouling our coastal waterways and ocean.
But you can take simple steps in your own garden to create beautiful landscapes that capture the eye of your neighbors while capturing the polluted runoff that flows to our local beaches.
Our ocean friendly garden publication can give you more tips on starting this out at home or also check out
Oregon Sea Grant extension's
H20NCoast blog for some of their great work and training opportunities on this.
Planning for more complicated projects
Embarking on creating an ocean friendly garden can range from simple projects like rain gardens and barrels for your downspouts, to engineering for larger volumes of runoff from buildings like, Newport City Hall for example.
Check out the design at right and tip your hat to Surfrider Volunteer, Allan Schmidt for laying this out.
Allan's day job is doing this kind of work in Portland, where this type of run-off treatment is mandatory by code. Building an ocean friendly garden to capture a large roof's runoff on the Oregon coast takes some thought and engineering as you can see from this design (this is probably a bit larger scale than something you might want to implement at home).
