"This past spring we distributed about 350,000 stems of beach grass from our facility. After the hurricane. we had quite a number of calls from growers and farmers we've been working with for years." ...

So in 1995, Clemenson started growing beach grass. The market for it was strong, and today he has five acres planted in beach grass, which is used in projects from Maine to Virginia.

Shortly after, American beach grass, native to the East Coast and Great Lakes, debuted along the Clatsop Peninsula near the mouth of the Columbia River. By the 1950s, nonnative beach grasses had ...