Sea oats are a great success story. For years they were cleared off the beach so that there would be bare sand to walk on. Then people saw that the bare sand tended to blow away or wash away when storms came by. Jacksonville Beach has done a great job in this respect. They let the sea oats reestablish themselves, with a lot of planting done by local people. They built walkovers to the beach so as not to disturb the plants. The result is a line of dunes, covered with sea oats. These plants laugh at salt water and sea breezes. Their root systems are incredibly long. (You try getting nourishment out of salty sand) This holds the dunes very well. Even when a storm makes inroads into the dune, the sea oats reseed and reclaim. They are planting similar types of plants in dunes where hurricane Sandy hit to protect that land. I don't think that sea oats live that far north. Web research tells me that sea oats range ends in Virginia, so N.Y. and N.J. must be using other plants.
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