Although Lise Crafton isn’t originally from Anne Arundel County, she’s made it her home for the past 10 years, living along the Magothy River in Severna Park, on a piece of property that’s been in her husband Jim’s family for over 100 years.
“He really was my introduction to the Magothy River,” Crafton says. “I grew up in Harford County, playing on a lot of creeks and in the woods when I was growing up, but really didn’t have any knowledge of this part of Maryland.”
Crafton is from the rural town of Jarrettsville, and worked in product development for Hunt Valley-based McCormick & Company until retiring in 2015. Now, being neighbors with the Magothy River and the Magothy River Association (MRA) President Paul Spadaro, the 62-year-old Crafton knew she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to become an active member with the organization.
What does the MagothyRiver Association do?
The Magothy River Association is just such a cool organization. They’ve got their hands into everything. They are an environmental organization and certainly dedicated to maintaining the health of the river, and most of our projects really have to do with that. A lot of us [volunteers] are involved in the Marylanders Grow Oysters program and have oysters hanging off our docks as a way to filter the water.
Paul got me involved in the floating garden project, which dovetails really nicely with my Master Gardener background. It’s about educating people to see what a difference those emergent plants can make, even in a small area. We started to publish the Floating Gardener newsletter a couple of years ago. It’s been great, and it’s a way for them [MRA] to connect and communicate [with the public].
How did you become involved with the organization?
We live on the Magothy River and I’ve always had an environmental bent, so it just seemed like a cool thing to do. My husband didn’t grow up on the Magothy, but he was down here every weekend. He has memories of when the grasses were all over the place, and when you just went down to the dock and scooped up a soft crab for dinner. I found his memories inspiring. Paul says the same thing. If we get people in the right mindset, or the same mindset, we can maybe recapture some of that.
All of this converged when we moved down here. I’ve been a Master Gardener for 10 years and have volunteered with MRA for 10 years. It is really cool because when you start, you realize how small the environmental community is in Anne Arundel County. It’s broad, but it is a small family. It’s like there are all these little interconnections. If you get involved in one thing, it’s pretty easy.
In what ways do youcontribute to the floating garden project?
With the help of the college [Anne Arundel Community College], we are able to identify plants that would thrive in certain areas. The plants get started in the greenhouse and get a little bit of root mass going, and then we just stick them in these floating gardens and launch them off people’s piers or bulkheads.
From that point on, the plants are using the nutrients in the river as their food. It’s almost like Miracle-Gro. They’re using that to grow and as a result, it increases the level of oxygen, but it also makes this really great habitat. All the roots and stuff that hang down in the water, when you look underneath these things, is astounding. That’s where all the little fish are. That’s where little crabs are hanging out. It’s like this little town. That’s really the purpose of them; not just to help filter the water, but to create habitat.
The one negative of the floating gardens in the last couple of years is we were using Styrofoam as the flotation device. Styrofoam is about as un-environmentally friendly as you can get. That was another thing that we put Jim to work on when he retired. He and I have been trying to develop an alternative system that’s more environmentally friendly. Along with Paul, we’ve built several new variations on a theme and float-tested them last summer, with the idea that this year, we can start producing those and getting those out to folks to replace the Styrofoam ones.
Tell me about the FloatingGardener newsletter youstarted in 2015.
We have a pretty big distribution list. I’m going to say we’re up to about 275 folks. It includes people in the state government, county government, and the DNR. I think we’ve got some folks on there from SERC [Smithsonian Environmental Research Center].
In the last couple of years, we’ve dedicated a lot of issues to sharing the science behind it. It comes out at the beginning of the growing season and the end of the growing season. The last couple of years, we have had a big sale of the floating gardens at the farmers’ market, so the newsletter comes out at that time to support people that are getting them for the first time. A lot of times, people have questions about, “Now what do I do with this stuff in the fall?” So, we put out another issue then. A lot of the content is basic science-type stuff. Some of it lately has been about what’s been going on in other parts of the world. We’re trying to keep people interested and inspired. You’re a small part of something bigger that’s going on out there.
What do you hope the Magothy River Association can accomplish in the future?
We would love to have younger people get involved, but it’s so hard because when you’re young, you’ve got school, work, and kids to raise. One of my hopes would be to figure out a way to maybe chunk this up in small periods of time. Even if you don’t have the time to dedicate to pursue some of the things in as much depth, there are ways to participate, and I think just being able to communicate to people that this is your river, and even if it’s on a small scale, there are things that you can do to help maintain and improve the health of the river.
For more information, visit magothyriver.org
