NeighborSpace is proud to be a partner in the Community Climate Resilience Project in Turner Station, funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Coastal Resilience Fund. Working alongside Baltimore County, the Turner Station Conservation Teams (TSCT), The Nature Conservancy, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the project’s goal is to create a community-informed roadmap of solutions to address chronic flooding in this historic waterfront community.
NeighborSpace’s Role
Since October 2023, NeighborSpace has been leading community engagement efforts, building on our longstanding partnership with TSCT through the conservation of Chestnut Park. Our role has included conducting a community-wide survey, with 140 residents participating, to better understand the social, economic, and health impacts of flooding. Residents also submitted photographs of flooding events, which Baltimore County used to help calibrate a new hydrologic model. Together, this community knowledge and technical data have informed the Turner Station Resilience Roadmap, which will be released this fall.
Barrels & Bayscapes: Hands-On Resilience at Home
While larger-scale infrastructure projects are in the works, NeighborSpace and TSCT are committed to delivering immediate, practical solutions residents can implement at home. This summer, we launched our Barrels & Bayscapes initiative with a community event on July 26th.
At the event, residents learned how to:
- Install and care for rain barrels, which capture and store stormwater for later use. Participants could sign up for a free rain barrel and installation kit.
- Plant a bayscape garden, replacing small patches of lawn with native plants that absorb up to 40 times more stormwater than turf grass. These gardens not only reduce standing water but also attract pollinators and bring seasonal color to yards. We gave away bayscape kits that included 24 native plants, compost, mulch, watering tools, and an installation and care guide.
- Add trees for shade and stormwater absorption. Thirty native trees, including redbuds, serviceberries, and sweetbay magnolias, were distributed.
Residents also had the opportunity to sign up for professional bayscape garden installations. NeighborSpace is partnering with Wildside Nursery to install 12 residential bayscape gardens this fall, building on our previous collaborations to install the pollinator garden at Graystone Open Space and residential pollinator patches in the Greenbrier and Dunmore neighborhoods.
Starting Small and Scaling Up
Small-scale, home-based practices like rain barrels and bayscape gardens may not solve flooding alone, but they can:
- Empower residents to take action.
- Beautify yards and community spaces.
- Demonstrate small-scale, practical, affordable, and effective stormwater management practices.
Together, these projects build momentum for the larger infrastructure solutions identified in the Resilience Roadmap.
Looking Ahead
Baltimore County is actively pursuing funding to bring the Resilience Roadmap’s larger projects, such as upgraded storm drains and bioretention facilities, to life.
In the News
This project, NeighborSpace’s work with TSCT and the community, and Turner Station’s historical struggle against flooding were recently featured in The Nature Conservancy’s national magazine. You can read the article here: Life at Water’s Edge.
