With over 10,000 lakes dotting its landscape, Minnesota has long embraced a lifestyle intertwined with water, where tranquil mornings on the dock and lively summer gatherings by the shore are integral to our state’s cultural fabric. Minnesota’s lakes, natural shorelines, lake homes, and cabins embody a legacy of deep-rooted connection to nature and outdoor recreation. These pristine waters and rustic retreats are not just scenic features, but central to many Minnesotans’ way of life, offering cherished spaces for family gatherings, fishing, boating, and relaxation. The tradition of cabin life fosters a unique sense of community and heritage, reflecting a lifestyle that values both tranquility and adventure.
Recently, MPR’s Kirsti Marohn has started a radio broadcast series called Trouble by the water: Minnesota’s vanishing natural lakeshores, which examines the way that Minnesota’s love of lakes and cabin culture is having an adverse effect on what is possibly its greatest asset— its water.
Marohn’s reporting brings to light the rapid pace at which Minnesota’s natural lakeshore is disappearing due to a combination of development and poor lakeshore stewardship. As demand for lakefront property grows, and cabins and lake homes with water access become ever more enviable, natural shoreline areas are increasingly being altered or replaced with impermeable surfaces and structures that disrupt natural habitats. Liminal zones are being removed where native plants like bulrushes, sedges, horsetail ease the transition between water and land; and in their place, landowners are mowing stretches of grass straight up to strips of bald rock riprap at the edge of the water.
The introduction of this suburban aesthetic onto the natural lakeshore deprives the lake of a very important function of its ecosystem. Native plants with deep and sprawling root systems create a buffer that filters water runoff. By removing excess nutrients in runoff such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, this buffer prevents the rapid eutrophication of the lake. In lakes that lack this filter, the excess nutrients in the water catalyze excess plant growth including algae blooms which block out the sunlight (and smell terrible). Then in turn, bacteria decompose dead algae, consuming the water’s dissolved oxygen, which can lead to fish die-offs, and even create hypoxic environments wherein not enough oxygen exists to sustain life– a “dead zone”.
By maintaining and stewarding natural shorelines, homeowners can protect the quality and clarity of our lakes. Not only do natural shoreline plants act as a natural filter; they also prevent erosion, slow the process of sedimentation, and provide nesting and breeding habitat for wildlife— think loons, ducks, turtles, dragonflies.
Building waterfront cabins and lake homes without considering the buffer zone of the natural shoreline continually destroys this ecosystem that is so vital to the health of our lakes. Over the last few decades, the Minnesota DNR reports a loss of 40-50% of the state’s natural lake shoreline. We are currently losing natural shoreline at a pace of 1% per year, and with it the pristine clarity of our water.
Last week at the SALA office lunch table, multiple people remarked hearing Kirsti Marohn’s reporting on the radio and began musing about what SALA can do to shift perceptions of waterfront aesthetics. For over 40 years as an architecture firm, SALA has been designing lake homes and cabins on waterfront properties. We are not necessarily a landscape architecture firm, so the bulk of our design is concerned primarily with the physical building and less with yards, lawns, or plantings. However, siting, setbacks, viewsheds, and materials are very much a part of our design process, all of which are significant in considering a cabin’s relationship to waterfront. The use of permeable pavers and green roofs as strategies for mitigating runoff have long been a part of our toolkit, as is an awareness of how rustic and naturalistic aesthetics contribute to the comfy feeling of “cabin-ness”.
So with Kirsti Marohn’s lakeshore broadcast as a reminder, we begin a renewed conversation and commitment to Minnesota’s natural lakeshore. Not solely a commitment to helping clients implement the minimum 25-foot natural buffer zone recommended by the DNR, but also a renewed consideration of the photographs, drawings, diagrams and renderings we share in magazines, books, publications, and with our clients. We are in the business of helping people visualize spaces. Each image we create has the potential to slowly shift the aesthetic values of the general public. So by committing ourselves to the aesthetics of rustic natural shoreline, we invest ourselves not only in the rich legacy of Minnesota’s cabins, but also to the preservation and health of its water.
For more information about natural shoreline preservation and rehabilitation, visit the following sites:
Minnesota Lakes and Rivers Steward Program
Shoreline Management Program, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
Guide to Lake Protection and Management, Freshwater Society, 2004
Minnesota’s Lake Associations: Who they are and what they do, September, 2017