The Green Book for the Buffer: An Illustrated Guidebook for Planting at the Shorline

This book has been prepared by the Critical Area Commission for the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays in partnership with Adkins Arboretum as a design guide to help homeowners with planting and maintaining shoreline buffers. Planting areas of native trees, shrubs, vines, flowers, and grasses and maintaining areas of natural vegetation adjacent to tidal waterways, tidal wetlands, and streams is one of the simplest, yet most effective, ways to improve the health of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Coastal Bays.

This design guide builds on the information in The Green Book for the Bay, An Illustrated Guidebook for Chesapeake Bay Property Owners Living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. This book was published by Adkins Arboretum in December 2008 and provides general information about Maryland’s Critical Area Program. Based on the simple and extensively illustrated approach used in the first guide, The Green Book for the Buffer focuses on “the Critical Area Buffer,” the area immediately adjacent to tidal waters, tidal wetlands, and tributary streams. Because of its proximity to tidal waterways and tributaries, protecting and enhancing “the Buffer” is the foundation of the Critical Area Program’s land use regulations. It is so important that, in 2010, the Buffer provisions in the Code of Maryland Regulations were substantially amended and expanded. The purpose of this effort was to improve implementation, create greater consistency, and address the latest scientific studies related to using buffers to improve water quality and habitat.