Jeff Corbin of Native Shorelines was astonished when he revisited a Gloucester home recently and saw the shoreline project he and co-worker Lucy Deigman installed there almost exactly a year before. Native marsh grasses were tall and abundant along a small sand beach, flourishing in what was once a barren mudflat, and mussels were growing on a man-made reef. Corbin said when he first visited the site, the shoreline was steep and undercut and there were a lot of trees in the water that had been lost, either because of the salt in the water or because the roots were undercut. Working with homeowner Kent Gray, his company installed pre-cast QuickReef structures to control the shoreline erosion and backfilled with sand. Then he and Deigman, a shoreline specialist, planted the marsh grasses on their hands and knees. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything this lush after a year,” he said. While the concrete reef structures might seem unsightly at first, Corbin said he tells landowners they ...