The Return Of The Prairie

     If you’re like me, you once had a 14-foot-wide dirt trench running through your front yard. Long story short, due to some flooding problems, we had to have the driveway redone and the trench was for carrying the water away from the house instead of into the basement.

While this trench was a literal scar on the face of the property, it presented an opportunity that my wife and I leapt at. Where there was once a trench, there is now a prairie.

Since my wife and I moved in, we have been trying to reintroduce native plants to our yard. Native plants, the plants that were here 200 years ago are a vital part of the local ecosystem. Unfortunately, they don’t always play well with nonnative species with the nonnative often crowding out the plants that were here the whole time. Turns out, the animals prefer prairie as well.

Native prairie plants are what the native animals are looking for. People often wonder why they aren’t getting butterflies and hummingbirds in their yard like they used to. Part of it’s because our yards don’t look like what those animals are looking for. We’ve replaced some of their favorite plants to eat with some of our favorite plants to look at.

This is a case of, if you build it, they will come. By reestablishing native prairie plants, we now have several varieties of bees, butterflies, and a charm of hummingbirds in our front yard nearly every day. There’s also a variety of other birds, mammals, and even frogs that flock to this strip that we’ve returned to its natural state.

One of the things I like best is that prairie plants are low maintenance. If you’re looking for a sustainable yard, build a prairie. You have to cut or burn it once a year. That’s about it. As someone who hates mowing, that’s a big plus. We even found some No Mow grass that stays low to the ground that we used to finish our prairie. It saves time and even gas for the mower because there’s now an entire part of the yard that maintains itself. It’s good for the environment and saves us money and labor.

Also, these plants are beautiful. They bloom at different parts of the Spring, Summer, and Fall and with a little planning, the Moderow prairie boasts a plant in every color of the rainbow. Cardinal flower, butterfly weed, goldenrod, milkweed, lobelia, aster, bergamot, and a dozen others, all worth looking up and all their own special explosion of color. Throw in the many-hued butterflies and birds, and you like me will spend long hours just staring into this new environment you’ve created.

I’ve often wondered why more parks don’t utilize native prairie. It’s good for the environment. It brings plenty of wildlife which is one of the things people go to the park for. It’s sustainable, requiring very little maintenance which saves them, and by extension, we the taxpayer, money. As I’ve written about before, the prairie section is one of the reasons I love Oakdale so much.

So, imagine my excitement when I discovered plans getting underway at Winter Park to transition some of the open field back into prairie. There will still be places to play and walk but now there will also be a section that will look the way it used to. A wide, sustainable habitat for the animals, a low maintenance development for the park, and something unique and beautiful for the people.

I’m thrilled to see how this project develops, and I hope you are too.