When you think of gardening, flowers, vegetables, and herbs usually come to mind. But one program is growing a local favorite they choose not to eat all in name of the environment. Oysters are used to clean up our local water.

Kara Lankford is the Oyster Gardening Program Coordinator with the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program. "Most people might think they're great to eat, but may not realize how important they are for water quality in our ecosystem. Oysters clean out any toxins, bacteria, and clean up water basically."

Oyster gardening is a nine month process. Lankford says the program starts in March and ends in November. The volunteers are chosen first, and then given dried oyster shells to help grow other oysters. "We give probably 500 shells, and depending on the spat set for the year, and that turns in to about 1,000 oysters." Spat are oysters that are less than a year old. The dried oyster shells and spat are put into cages and left to grow. Just on one dried oyster shell, over 10 other oysters attach to it and grow

Volunteers like Kent Sanderson enjoy watching the oysters grow. He also likes getting children interested in the environment. "Getting the youth educated about our environment, I would say, that is my biggest enjoyment. Just saying hey that's something cool, come check it out." The volunteers make sure there are no predators like blue crabs in the cages.

Lankford says in November, collection begins. "In November, we'll go around and collect all the oysters, and we actually use Auburn University's Marine Extension two boats. We’ll pile the oysters on the two boats and take then out to a reef that we've selected. We put them on a reef that is non-harvestable just because we kind of want these guys to be a water quality aspect, and not to be eaten right away. But eventually we hope that maybe we can restore these closed reefs to harvestable reefs."

The oyster gardening program is now in its’ sixth year. There are over 40 volunteers that check on their oyster gardens about once a week. They are each given 4 cages. If you live south of Fowl River in both Mobile and Baldwin Counties, you too can help. Check out the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program’s website for more information.