BY LISA OWENS VIANI
A retired cranberry bog inspires an innovative approach to wetland restoration.
FROM THE JANUARY 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.
In 2005, Glorianna Davenport began to think about retiring the cranberry farm she owned in Plymouth, Massachusetts. In the late 1980s, the 600-acre farm was producing 1 percent of Ocean Spray?s cranberry harvest, but Davenport had become concerned about the amount of pesticides being used?and the way those pesticides were applied. ?Because cranberries are grown on former wetlands, we had to farm with helicopters,? Davenport says. ?And spraying chemicals from helicopters is not really great in a densely populated area.? Davenport, a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Laboratory, whose husband bought the cranberry farm in the early 1980s, could also see the handwriting on the wall for older cranberry farms, with new cultivars producing five times as many berries, farmed in places easier to access than wetlands and river bottoms. ?The industry was changing pretty radically,? Davenport says. ?The way we had been farming was really the legacy of another era.? Davenport learned that a nearby cranberry farm had been restored back to wetlands?said to be the first project of its kind in the United States?and that she was eligible for assistance through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service?s Wetlands Reserve Program, which pays farmers to take land out of production to preserve, restor...