Maryland will add 324.89 acres to Doncaster Demonstration State Forest in Charles County and help the county buy a conservation easement on another 72.9 acres near Nanjemoy, under land and park grants the Board of Public Works approved Oct. 7. The approvals are part of a $12.7 million round for Baltimore City and ten counties in which St. Mary’s County also landed money for park work in Lexington Park and Leonardtown.
The Charles County easement is the smaller of the two land deals but the only one with a price attached. The board approved $293,000 in Rural Legacy funding for Charles County to buy the easement inside the Nanjemoy-Mattawoman Forest Rural Legacy Area. According to the Department of Natural Resources, the easement will protect farmland and woodlands, including a stream buffer in the Nanjemoy Creek watershed. The release does not identify the property or its owner. Divided out, the grant works to roughly $4,000 an acre, a figure the Chronicle calculated from the two published numbers rather than one the state reported.
The forest addition is bigger and less clear on cost. The 324.89-acre tract will be added to Doncaster Demonstration State Forest using Program Open Space-Stateside money. DNR says the addition will expand silvicultural education and public recreation, protect water quality and preserve habitat for Forest Interior Dwelling Species, the birds that need large unbroken woodlands to nest. The state describes the existing forest, in Nanjemoy on both sides of Port Tobacco Road, as more than 1,450 acres, so the new land amounts to roughly a fifth more. DNR did not say what the state is paying for the tract. It reported only that the Stateside program put $1.87 million into three acquisitions totaling almost 844 acres statewide: the Charles tract plus 138.26 acres in Worcester County and 380.67 acres in Wicomico County for Chesapeake Forest Lands. That means the Charles purchase cost no more than $1.87 million, and likely less.
The two Charles items arrive as the county tests a different way to keep trees standing. On Oct. 6, the Charles County Commissioners approved an agreement with the Resilience Authority of Charles County to place easements on forest land so the county can earn stormwater permit credit. County planning staff described that program as a supplement to state tools, because the state’s credit rules bar land already covered by Program Open Space or Rural Legacy. The easement and addition approved Oct. 7 fall in exactly the categories that program cannot touch. Together they are a reminder that Southern Maryland’s forest protection runs on several separate funding tracks, each with its own rules and paperwork. The Chronicle has followed the Rural Legacy track in the same Nanjemoy-Mattawoman area before, when the board approved $3.2 million for Charles County conservation easements in August 2025.
In St. Mary’s County, the money goes to parks. Under Program Open Space-Local, which DNR said put nearly $11.79 million into 21 projects statewide, St. Mary’s will replace the splash pad at Nicolet Park and renovate a barn at Snow Hill Park for safety and what DNR called enhanced use. The release gives no dollar amount for either project and does not say where Snow Hill Park is. Nicolet Park is in Lexington Park.
The third St. Mary’s item resolves a question the Chronicle raised in August. When the state announced an earlier round, Charles and St. Mary’s appeared in the opening sentence with no project attached, and the Chronicle pointed to a Leonardtown splash pad as a likely candidate. It now has its approval. The Community Parks and Playgrounds program set aside $370,500 for two projects in this round, one of them a new splash pad at Leonard Hall Miedzinski Park in Leonardtown. The state’s June announcement put the Leonardtown award at $300,000, as the Chronicle reported at the time. The other project, a parking lot and walking path at Friendship Hall Park in East New Market, is in Dorchester County and was listed at $70,500, which accounts for the full $370,500.
Statewide, the round reached well beyond Southern Maryland. The board approved basketball courts and a playground at Wiley H. Bates Heritage Park in Anne Arundel County, pickleball courts in Cambridge, fields and a playground at the Northern Worcester Athletic Complex in Berlin, and pool, trail and playground work in Hagerstown and Washington County. Baltimore City received money for Druid Hill Park’s conservatory, Patterson Park and the Robert C. Marshall Recreation Center. In Baltimore County, $253,000 went to the Gunpowder Valley Conservancy for a 31.9-acre easement near the Loch Raven Reservoir. The headline $12.7 million adds up from the local park grants, the Community Parks and Playgrounds awards and the two Rural Legacy easements; the $1.87 million for state forest and land acquisitions, including Doncaster, appears to be counted separately.
The board is Gov. Wes Moore, Treasurer Dereck E. Davis and Comptroller Brooke E. Lierman. The full list of items, including any amounts DNR left out of its summary, sits in the board’s Oct. 7 agenda. Until the Doncaster purchase price and the St. Mary’s project amounts are public in that document or from the counties, residents can see what Southern Maryland is getting, but not yet what each piece costs. Calvert County had no item in this round.
