On a gray day last month, a crew from Washington Conservation Corps worked the loamy soil at Jane Slade’s property on inner Quartermaster Harbor, carefully placing tall Oregon grape, native mock orange and tufted hairgrass into the fresh dirt.

Along the upper reaches of the beach, they had already installed several other native plants: Puget Sound gumweed, Douglas asters and coastal strawberry. Coconut-fiber logs now provide temporary erosion control. A path wends through this new native garden, replacing the rickety steps that used to lead to the beach.

Slade smiled as she watched the crew work. “Isn’t it pretty?” she asked.

Slade’s property has undergone a transformation, thanks to a grant from Shore Friendly King County. Gone is a rough swath of non-native plants that acted as a kind of bulkhead, a carpet of turf grass that created what she called “a bowling alley” towards the beach, and construction debris left behind by a previous owner.

In their place is a native landscape that sweeps gently to the water, providing habitat for birds and small mammals and a shoreline ecosystem that supports surf smelt, sand lance, herring and other forage fish. Those small fish feed salmon, which in turn support Puget Sound’s resident orca whales.

“We’ve created a smooth transition from the land to the beach,” said Amy Cirio, education and restoration specialist for the Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group, pausing from her work filming the installation project. “A natural grade … breaks up the wave energy. Native plants have deep roots that limit erosion. They attract insects that fall into the water and feed fish.”

Already, Slade said, she’s seeing more birds on her small patch of waterfront. She and her husband, Max Slade, have lived in a house across the street for 15 years but rarely spent time on their lot along the harbor. “Now, I feel drawn out here,” she said. “It’s become a destination.”

Shore Friendly is a program under the Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosystem Recovery Project, which is run by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and the state’s Estuary and Salmon Recovery Program. Other Puget Sound counties have similar programs — in King County, the partnership includes the Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group, the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks and King Conservation District.

The goal is to work with individual landowners to address one of the most significant harms to the sound’s ecological health: armored shorelines that destroy spawning habitat for forage fish, the basis of the Puget Sound food chain.

More than a third of Puget Sound’s shoreline is hardened by impermeable bulkheads that disrupt a suite of important ecological processes, according to the Estuary and Salmon Restoration Program. Bulkheads are often made from logs covered in creosote, which leaches into the salt water, harming fish. The bulkheads themselves shorten the beach, interrupting the natural drifting of sand and sediments and causing high-energy waves that scour the beach.

If there’s enough sand with the right kinds of beach gravel, juvenile forage fish will spawn, said Antonia Jindrich, co-executive director of Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group. “If the bulkhead is cutting that beach off, there’s no place for them to spawn.”

Marine scientists have studied the impact of bulkhead removal and found well-documented differences, she added. “Salmon usage is much greater around beaches without bulkheads.”

Slade, whose property is the first on Vashon to be restored by Shore Friendly King County, learned about the program six years ago when she went to a workshop for waterfront property owners interested in how to care for their land. There, she learned that she could have a couple of people come out to her property and draw up a landscaping plan using native plants.

She was unhappy with the suburban look of her land, so she agreed. What she didn’t realize is that the program was also looking for something bigger — the opportunity, where appropriate, to offer a wholesale restoration program in order to improve the nearshore ecosystem. “They found such an opportunity on my property,” she said.

Negotiations began. Shore Friendly staff asked her what she wanted on her property. “I told them I wanted an easier way down to the beach,” she said. And they told her what they wanted — regrading her land to remove the bulkhead-like bank above the beach and the installation of hundreds of native plants that she would need to keep in place for many years. They determined a cost-share — the program would pay for the bulk of the costs — and in 2019, she and her husband signed an agreement.

Slade assumed the work would begin quickly, but then the COVID pandemic hit, followed by staff changes at some of the partner agencies. On top of that were permitting challenges. Because the project entailed moving earth on waterfront property, a number of permits — issued by agencies at all levels of government — were required. Most were issued quickly, except the one she needed from King County.

“As we all know, permitting takes a long time around here, and this was no exception,” she said.

In fact, Slade said, it began to look like she wouldn’t make it: She had to get the project done by Feb. 15 of this year or she’d lose her funding. After a few strategic calls to people high up in King County, she finally got approved in January, and the crew jumped into action. “Everyone turned on a freaking dime,” she said.

She hired her own landscape architect, David Berleth, who used the plants chosen by the project to create a design Slade found attractive — low-growing wildflowers would be used to create a meadow in the middle, taller ones would be placed along the sides, providing some privacy. He also designed a gently curving path to the beach to replace her slippery steps.

Other work — covered by the cost-share — included grading the land (done by Greentree Dozing, a Vashon company), removing invasive plants and construction debris, adding compost and woodchips and planting a total of 370 native shrubs, grasses and wildflowers.

The results are significant, she said. “It’s gorgeous. I feel super grateful.” The process was a bit like childbirth, she said — a hard labor, “but now I’m holding my pretty baby.”

Those involved in the project are also pleased by the results. Jindrich, with Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group, recently toured the property and was struck by what she saw as the obvious benefits. It’s a classic win-win, she said — great for the Slades but also for the environment.

“I’m excited to see how it looks in a couple of years,” she said.

Leslie Brown is a former editor of The Beachcomber.

David Berleth, a landscape architect, places native grasses along the slope at the Slades’ property. (Courtesy photo)