The Surfrider Foundation Ocean City Chapter is proud to celebrate an exciting milestone for our community: the completion of Berlin, Maryland's very first Ocean Friendly Garden.
This project is the result of an incredible community collaboration, bringing together local organizations, businesses, volunteers, and the Town of Berlin with one shared goal, protecting our waterways through nature-based solutions.
Ocean Friendly Gardens are a Surfrider Foundation program that transforms traditional landscapes into vibrant spaces that work with nature instead of against it. By using native plants, healthy soils, compost, and sustainable landscaping practices, these gardens help capture and filter stormwater before it carries pollution into our streams, bays, and ultimately the ocean. They also provide valuable habitat for pollinators and wildlife while creating beautiful spaces the community can enjoy. Ocean Friendly Gardens is part of Surfrider's Clean Water Initiative and have helped prevent millions of gallons of polluted runoff from reaching coastal waters nationwide.
What makes this project especially meaningful is the community that came together to make it happen.
The Town of Berlin provided the space, site preparation, watering, and mulching to help establish the garden. The Schramm family of Berlin generously donated countless hours planning, designing, sourcing materials, and will continue serving as dedicated caretakers of the garden.
We are also deeply grateful to the organizations whose generosity made this vision possible:
- Community Foundation of the Eastern Shore for providing grant funding.
- Go Green OC for donating nutrient-rich compost.
- String and Petals for donating beautiful native plants.
- Assateague Coastal Trust for providing native plants at a generous discount.
Every contribution, whether through funding, materials, planning, or volunteer time, played an essential role in creating a space that will benefit the community for years to come.
This garden is more than a landscape improvement. It is a living demonstration of how local action can create healthier habitats, improve water quality, support pollinators, and build resilience for our coastal communities. Every native plant and every inch of healthy soil helps slow and filter stormwater, reducing the pollution that eventually reaches our bays and ocean.
We hope Berlin's first Ocean Friendly Garden inspires residents, businesses, schools, and municipalities throughout the region to consider how sustainable landscaping can make a lasting difference.
The Surfrider Foundation Ocean City Chapter extends our sincere thanks to everyone who contributed their time, expertise, and generosity. Together, we're proving that when a community comes together around a shared vision, we can create lasting environmental change, one garden at a time.
As Mid-Atlantic Regional Manager, Kayla supports a vibrant network of volunteer-run chapters along the Atlantic Seaboard. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from West Chester University and two years of service in AmeriCorps before her current role.