Naturalize Your Lot
A Guide to Lake-Friendly Landscaping
Be Lake Informed
Naturalize Your Lot
Assessing Your Lot
Obtaining Permits
Minimizing Your Footprint
Shoreline Restoration
Planting for the Lake
Preventing Noxious Weeds
Maintaining Lake Lawns
Naturalize Your Lot is an e-guide to inspire landscaping projects that reintroduce natural spaces on residential properties at Pigeon Lake. It includes actions that every resident, landscape contractor and developer can do to help preserve and protect the lake.
The guide was created by the Pigeon Lake Watershed Association as part of the implementation of the Pigeon Lake Watershed Management Plan.
In this Guide
Assessing Your Lot
Evaluate where you can make a difference using the PLWA Self-Guided Property Assessment Tool
Minimizing Your Footprint
Discover ways you can reduce pollution from runoff entering the lake.
Obtaining Permits
Planning to make changes on your lake lot? Know the regulations.
Shoreline Restoration
Restore natural shoreline vegetation to improve water quality, shoreline stability and wildlife habitat.
Planting for the Lake
Add native species - trees, shrubs and wildflowers - to create a home for birds, butterflies, and bees. Natural vegetation also slows and filters runoff and prevents erosion.
Preventing Noxious Weeds
Prevent the spread of noxious weeds that outcompete native species and compromise a healthy ecosystem and our well-being.
Maintaining Lake Lawns
Manage lawn care in the watershed without using fertilizers and pesticides.
Why a natural landscape?
Whether your lot abuts the lake or is well back from the lake, landscaping utilizing natural vegetation (naturalization) is beneficial to the watershed and the lake and our enjoyment of the spectacular natural setting and its wildlife. Naturalization is a form responsible stewardship for lot owners living near a lake
Increasing the percentage of natural vegetation on your lot will:
promote cleaner runoff into the lake
provide habitat for wildlife and migratory bird species
guard against extreme climate variations
improve your physical and intellectual enjoyment of the natural setting of Pigeon Lake
For those lot owners fortunate to live right on the lake, naturalizing the shoreline has some additional benefits:
protecting the water quality of the lake by filtering pollutants
stabilizing the shore against erosion
buffering of private property development from destructive forces related to flooding, wind storms and ice thrusts
All of these benefits are called ecosystem services. For more about ecosystem services and the benefit of naturalization check out: Stepping Back from the Water
Lakes naturally age over time through a process called eutrophication, which can be sped up in highly developed areas due to excess nutrient inputs. A more naturalized landscape, with permeable surfaces and vegetation, helps to mitigate this issue through natural filtration of runoff. Learn more about eutrophication.
Inspire others - Naturalizing your lot is entirely voluntary but by living lake-friendly, you will help to inspire change in your community. Working together we can make a difference for the lake.