Wayne Morris is the owner / operator of Semiahmoo Stables.

When A Rocha came to talk to Wayne about creating a riparian buffer on his property he was immediately interested. He already had trouble with his horses accessing the ditch on his property.

They will start eating here and then there’s grass down there and pretty soon they are in the ditch and can’t get out.

The group offered to take on the whole project—planning, labour and materials—to create and fence off a riparian buffer along Wayne’s ditch. The project would also improve water quality by keeping horse manure out and included removing blackberries as well as planting native species.

Wayne had nothing but positives to say about working with A Rocha. The land owner and the group worked well together. A Rocha planned the project, supplied plants and labour as well as fencing materials. Wayne taught the volunteers how to put in a fence. The A Rocha team manually cut up all the blackberries in the ditch; Wayne baked them muffins. Wayne thinks he got the better end of the deal.

Before they got here the ditch was infested with a species of blackberry, so they cleaned all of that out. Manually. Oh, brutal. . . They just had shovels and forks and lots of people. And if they say they are coming on Thursday they are coming. I said what if it’s a rain-out? They said “No such thing”.

The project went better than Wayne expected. He was skeptical at first of the timeline and figured they would do their best. But the group met their timeline and the final result exceeded Wayne’s expectations. His biggest ‘challenge’ was when more workers came than he had prepared food for!

Sometimes they come in groups of 8 or 9 and I hadn’t baked enough muffins to feed them all so I had to go bake more muffins.

Aside from his desires to feed the workers he was so grateful for, Wayne didn’t experience any challenges in this project. Though he says one thing limits his options to create riparian habitat throughout his property. As a horse stable, it is important that the property looks manicured, a look difficult to achieve with indigenous plants. But he prefers himself to look at the natural habitat, which he has in the back end of his property where he lives with his family.

I want it pristine on the front end but it’s nice to have something that looks like Mother Nature out the kitchen window.

Wayne is really pleased with his new riparian area. The plants stabilize the bank and the horses are “now safely quarantined away from the ditch.” The plants have now grown to their full height and in the springtime when the flowers show they are grouped attractively.

Working with A Rocha has been a really positive experience for Wayne. The group even came back a year later to help weed in the riparian area.

I have nothing but accolades for what they’ve done and the follow up has been really good. When I look at the dollar value of what they did it would be in the thousands. In terms of time, labour, materials, plants.

Wayne donates to the groups funding drives, but says what they’ve given him is way more than he could give back. He has also learned more about stewardship in the process.

The tips they gave me, it kind of went along through osmosis. So I know that I’m not going to cut anything down and toss it in the ditch. I know what you’ve done here is step the creek back to a 3:1 slope. I helped with my excavator to do that.

Wayne’s project turned out so well that his neighbour is now interested in working with A Rocha on a similar project.

They have asked my neighbour because the stream does go through his land. And he’s all for it but he did come here first and saw what they did and said, yea, that would make my place look better too. And be better for the stream.