For the past 50 years, Gary Berti has watched as a stretch of Delaware’s coastline slowly disappeared. Rising tides stripped the shoreline, leaving behind mud and a few tree stumps.

“Year after year, it gradually went from wild to deteriorated,” said Mr. Berti, whose parents moved to Angola by the Bay, a private community in Lewes, Del., in 1977, where he now lives with his wife, Debbie.

But in 2023, an extensive restoration effort converted a half-mile of shoreline from barren to verdant. A perimeter of logs and rolls of coconut husk held new sand in place. Lush beds of spartina, commonly known as cordgrass, grew, inviting wading birds and blue crabs.

Together, these elements have created a living shoreline, a nature-based way of stabilizing the coast, to absorb energy from the waves and protect the land from washing away.

50 States, 50 Fixes is a series about local solutions to environmental problems. More to come this year.

Mr. Berti had never seen the waterfront like this before. “The change has just been spectacular,” he said.

The practice of using natural materials to prevent erosion has been around for decades. But as sea levels rise and ever-intensifying storms pound coastlines, more places are building them.

The U.S. government counts at least 150 living shorelines nationwide, with East Coast states like Maryland, South Carolina and Florida remediating thousands of feet of tidal areas. Thanks to the efforts of the Delaware Living Shorelines Committee, a state-supported working group, Delaware has led the charge for years.

“Our state is only 90 miles long, we only have three counties, but we have almost 400 miles of shoreline,” said Olivia Allread, who leads outreach and education for both the committee and the state’s wetland monitoring program.

The committee estimates that there are several dozen living shoreline projects in the state. The group, made up of state agencies, nonprofit organizations and universities, helps landowners with every step, from creating a plan, to finding funding and applying for permits.

“The living component is key,” said Alison Rogerson, an environmental scientist for the state’s natural resources department and chair of the living shoreline committee.

The natural materials, she said, provide a permeable buffer. As waves pass through, they leave the mud and sand they were carrying on the side of the barrier closer to the shore. This sediment builds up over time, creating a stable surface for plants. As the plants grow, their roots reinforce the barrier by holding everything in place. The goal is not necessarily return the land to how it was before, but to create new, stronger habitat.

More traditional rigid structures, like concrete sea walls, steel bulkheads and piles of stone known as riprap, can provide instant protection but inevitably get weaker over time. Bulkheads can also backfire by eroding at the base or trapping floodwaters from storms. And because hardened structures are designed to deflect energy, not absorb it, they can actually worsen erosion in nearby areas.

Though living shorelines need initial care while they start to grow, scientists have found they can outperform rigid structures in storms and can repair themselves naturally. And as sea levels rise, living shorelines naturally inch inland with the coastline, providing continuous protection, whereas sea walls have to be rebuilt.

When the engineers leave after creating a gray rigid structure, like a sea wall, “that’s the strongest that structure is ever going to be, and at some point, it will fail,” said David Burdick, an associate professor of coastal ecology at the University of New Hampshire. “When we install living shorelines, it’s the weakest it’s going to be. And it will get stronger over time.”

In addition to creating new land and absorbing wave energy, the process helps filter out contaminants and provide sanctuary for crabs, fish, turtles and birds, Mrs. Rogerson said. “They’re like a Brita for our waterways, and a nursery ground for so many living things,” she said.

Ten years ago, Mrs. Rogerson and the committee used bags of oyster shells, which were recycled from restaurants, to restore the edge of a busy public boat channel in Lewes. They provided the perfect growing habitat for spat, or baby oysters.

Fully grown, an oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day. The site filled in faster than they expected, as shellfish and grasses grew abundantly on the accumulating sediment.

And just as coastal areas come in all shapes and sizes, so do living shorelines. In other places that the committee has supported projects, like Angola by the Bay and the Delaware Botanical Garden, brackish water meant that oysters wouldn’t grow. Instead, the private community opted for large timber logs while the botanical garden built a unique crisscross fence from dead tree branches found on site.

Doug Janiec, a restoration scientist at a consulting company, has spent decades working with the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays, part of the National Estuary Program. The center is a member of the Delaware Living Shorelines Committee, and Mr. Janiec has helped them identify potential remediation sites, like Angola by the Bay. “You can’t just copy and paste,” he said.

Sometimes, an area’s waves and wind are too powerful for a living shoreline to survive on its own, Mr. Janiec said. In these situations, a hybrid approach that combines hard structures can create a protected zone for plants and oysters to grow. And these don’t need to be traditional sea walls or riprap. Scientists can also use concrete reef structures and oyster castles to break up waves while allowing wildlife to thrive.

Gregg Moore, an associate professor of coastal restoration at the University of New Hampshire, said homeowners often choose rigid structures because they don’t act on erosion until the situation is urgent. When it comes to a person’s home, “you can’t blame somebody for wanting to put whatever they think is the fastest, most permanent solution possible,” he said.

In Angola by the Bay, the living shoreline cost roughly $200,000. The residents pitched in $20,000 and volunteered to do planting, and the Center for the Inland Bays helped them apply for grants that covered the rest.

Still, “there was a lot of concern about how much work it would take to maintain from our board,” said Ken O’Brien, the resident who led the project.

But since the work was completed, he said, the site has only needed a little bit of replanting. Eventually, the volunteers will need to prune out the Phragmites, a prolifically invasive reed that has begun to dominate eastern wetlands.

“Living shorelines are easier than people think, but they take a little time,” Mrs. Allread said. “You have to trust the process. Nature can do its own thing if you let it.”

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