Wisconsin Native Landscaping Rebates

Up to $50 reimbursement for native plants purchased through the Plant Dane Native Plant Program and planted in rain gardens, available only to residents who attend a Rain Garden Coaching session. MAMSWaP offers these 30-minute one-on-one coaching sessions once per year, in February/March; the sessions are open to all Dane County residents, but the $50 reimbursement is limited to residents of MAMSWaP communities. In 2026 the reimbursement was issued as a gift card.

Small reimbursement; main value is the free or low-cost coaching. MAMSWaP communities include Madison and surrounding Dane County municipalities. Check cityofmadison.com for current session dates and registration.

The Menomonee River Watershed Task Force and Milwaukee County offer resources for rain garden installation and native plantings in the Menomonee watershed. Contact for current cost-share program availability.

MMSD Fresh Coast Guardians plant sale is the main discount program for most Milwaukee-area residents.

Annual rain garden plant sale with native plants at up to 50% off retail. Plants sold in bundles ($12/bundle of 4, $3/plant; $45 minimum). Fresh Coast Guardians offers free design tools, workshops, and installation guidance. No cash rebate; discount at point of purchase.

MMSD GIPP funding is for organizations only, not homeowners. Plant sale is the main residential incentive. Workshops and design assistance available at no cost.

Oneida County Land and Water Conservation Department reimburses homeowners up to $10,000 or 50% of total project cost, whichever is less, for non-engineered conservation practices including rain gardens and native plantings (engineered practices are also eligible at a higher deposit tier). A refundable deposit is required before design work: $500 for non-engineered practices, $1,000 for engineered practices. The practice must remain in place for 10 years (Oneida County Land and Water Conservation Department; last verified July 2026).

Confirmed residential use via completed-projects examples including a lakeshore homeowner rain garden and native sedge planting.

The Rice Lake Lake Protection and Rehabilitation District reimburses 50% of a qualifying project cost, not to exceed $1,000, after completion. Qualifying projects are shoreline restoration with native vegetation (minimum 300 square feet), a rain garden planted with natives, rock infiltration, and water diversion. Open to Rice Lake property owners along or away from shore; rip rap is excluded (Rice Lake Lake District Reimbursement Program pages; last verified July 2026).

A Chapter 33 lake protection and rehabilitation district (a statutory unit of government), not a volunteer lake association, and the homeowner is the applicant of record. Found during the 2026-07-31 discovery sweep.

Burnett County pays up to 70 percent of the cost of plants and materials for shoreline planting, plus a one-time enrollment payment of $250, and an annual property tax credit of up to $50. Understand the commitment before enrolling, because this is closer to a long-running conservation enrollment than a one-time reimbursement: the county describes owners of enrolled parcels as receiving the annual tax credit in return for ensuring permanent protection of the shoreline zone. The program is open to private shoreline property owners on Burnett County lakes and rivers, so it is a waterfront program rather than a general front-yard one, and department staff make a free site visit as part of the process. Roughly 800 parcels have enrolled since 2000. No dollar cap is published on the 70 percent plants and materials share (Burnett County Land and Water Conservation Department Shoreline Incentive Program page; last verified August 2026).

Found during the 2026-08-17 discovery sweep, from a carry-forward lead opened 2026-07-31, and confirmed by a dedicated adversarial reviewer on the live page. Two corrections were applied to what the state research agent first reported, and both matter. First, the agent reported that the page contradicts itself, calling the $50 an "annual payment" in one place and a "property tax credit" in another; the reviewer could not reproduce that on the live page, where the $50 appears once and consistently as an annual property tax credit, so the copy above calls it a property tax credit and never a cash payment. Second, the permanent shoreline-protection commitment attached to enrollment was not in the original report at all and is surfaced in coverageDetails and requirements rather than buried, on the same reasoning that put the Hailey Idaho clawback in plain view: a homeowner should not discover an encumbrance after the fact. The cities array is illustrative of the county, not an eligibility test.

The City of Appleton credits $25 a year against the stormwater utility bill for a single-family or two-family property with an onsite rain garden. The credit runs for 3 years, after which a new application may be submitted. The rain garden must receive runoff from at least a quarter of the impervious surfaces on the site and be built to Wisconsin DNR Publication PUB-WI-776 standards. This is a modest ongoing bill credit rather than a cash rebate for the install (City of Appleton Stormwater Utility Credit Policy; last verified July 2026).

Ongoing bill credit, not a cash rebate, and a small one at $25 a year. Listed because it clears the settled triviality floor (Baltimore $8-16, Fitchburg $12 and Raritan Township $12 were all skipped; Ann Arbor $33 and Franklin MA $30 were listed). Found during the 2026-07-31 discovery sweep.

The Lake Ripley Management District cost-shares up to 50% of a project that controls erosion, protects water quality, or restores wildlife habitat on a property in the district. Eligible projects include shoreline erosion control and native plantings, rain gardens, and native buffer strips between the lake and a lawn. No dollar cap is published (Lake Ripley Management District Cost-share Programs page and its Landowner Cost-Share Project Packet; last verified July 2026).

No dollar cap is published anywhere in the district packet; the rate is a bare percentage, consistent with the existing no-cap entries for AR IRWP and IN WREC. The homeowner is the applicant of record. Found during the 2026-07-31 discovery sweep.

Jefferson County Land and Water Conservation Department reimburses 75% of total project costs up to $1,000 for native plant gardens adjacent to water, rain gardens, runoff diversions, and rock infiltration trenches. Eligible on properties within 1,000 feet of lakes and 300 feet of rivers or streams (Jefferson County LWCD Programs and Services page; last verified July 2026).

County-administered delivery of a state DNR-funded program. The homeowner applies to the county and the county publishes the residential rate, the same structure as the existing Oneida County WI entry and the NC CCAP county rows. Found during the 2026-07-31 discovery sweep.

Marinette County cost-shares shoreline buffer restoration at 60 to 80 percent, with the rate rising as the buffer gets deeper, and a minimum buffer depth of 20 feet. This is a waterfront program, not a general front-yard one: it is for riparian landowners restoring native vegetation along a shoreline. No dollar cap is published for buffer restoration itself. A separate erosion control practice, such as rip-rap installed alongside the buffer, is cost-shared at 50 percent up to $2,000, and that $2,000 cap belongs to the erosion control practice only, not to the buffer work (Marinette County Land and Water Conservation Division cost share program page; last verified August 2026).

Found during the 2026-08-17 discovery sweep, from a carry-forward lead opened 2026-07-31, and confirmed twice: once by the state research agent and once by a dedicated adversarial reviewer that fetched the live page independently and specifically tried to reject it. It survived because the page carries no agricultural practice categories, no "cooperator" framing, no conservation-plan requirement, and an individual riparian landowner as applicant of record. Two honesty notes. The absence of a dollar cap on the buffer share is a confirmed absence rather than a failure to find one: the reviewer traced the $2,000 figure on the page to the sibling erosion control practice. And fundingStatus is deliberately left unset rather than recorded as open, because no application window or funding cycle is published and asserting one would be a guess. The cities array is illustrative of the county, not an eligibility test; eligibility is county residency plus waterfront.

The City of La Crosse credits a fixed share of the residential stormwater fee for a qualifying rain garden: 80% for 185 cubic feet or greater, 60% for 139 to 184 cubic feet, and 40% for 92 to 138 cubic feet. Residential properties are billed a flat 1 Equivalent Runoff Unit per quarter at $36.18 effective January 1, 2026, so the maximum credit is worth roughly $116 a year. Single-family, twindo, duplex, and triplex properties of three or fewer units are eligible (City of La Crosse Stormwater Fees page and its Residential Credit Application Policy; last verified July 2026).

This is an ongoing bill credit, not a one-time cash rebate. Reverses a prior sweep's reading of this program as a percentage-of-fee formula credit: the residential fee is flat (1 ERU per property, not impervious-area computed) and the credit is a fixed published step table keyed to rain garden volume, so it clears the fixed-and-published bar. Found during the 2026-07-31 discovery sweep.