Winter Dreams of Prairie Gardens

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Brad Guhr

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We are near the longest nights of the year when your landscape is cold, brown, and sometimes snowy with few creatures stirring. But soon, if not already, you will be having visions of coneflowers and ground plums dancing in your head.

Since landscaping labor is not taking up your free time at the moment, now is the perfect time to be thinking about and planning the logistics of your spring or fall prairie garden.

Here are a few things you can be doing during the months of winter to prepare for your prairie garden:

Identify Desired Area

Identify the area you want to plant and measure the square footage. With a generally recommended planting rate of one plant/2-4 sq. ft., knowing your planting area will allow you to estimate the number of plants you need and help establish a budget (~$4/plant).

Install Edging

Edging around your prairie garden is not only aesthetically pleasing, but functionally critical to establish where you should stop weeding and start mowing. Garden center options include plastic, metal, wood, or brick, but my favorite is Kansas limestone. A good source in Central Kansas is the Florence Rock Quarry where I last acquired an inexpensive load for $20.50/ton.

Embedded limestone for a garden border.

Acquire Mulch

Mulch is essential to reduce water and nutrient competition for new prairie plants, reduce weeds, and slow soil moisture loss. Garden center mulch is always available in easy-to-transport bags but, you also have to pay for it. Many municipalities offer free self-serve mulch or a friendly request to a local tree-trimming contractor may get a pile delivered right to your desired location. A layer of newspaper under the mulch will give a bit more biodegradable weed protection in the first year.

Newspaper under mulch is a great first year weed barrier.

Plan for Bermuda Grass Eradication

Believe me, you don’t want it in your prairie garden. If your site gets plenty of sun you most likely have it; delay your planting till late summer so you can eradicate this species during its growing season. This is the one scenario for which I use herbicide and plan for two to three glyphosate treatments (e.g., Roundup) in the months of June-September to eliminate this very difficult-to-weed warm-season grass.

Killing Bermuda grass is essential before planting.

Hardscape Features

Water features and feeders attract wildlife, seating allows you to relax in your garden, and weatherproof artwork adds beauty.

Leopold Bench (http://www.aldoleopold.org/AldoLeopold/LeopoldEvents.shtml)

Petersen Elementary’s Artwork by Erin Dresher Dowell

Consider Sun Exposure and Other Notable Features

Sun exposure and notable features that affect soil moisture such as low spots or downspouts will affect your plant choices. Consider structures or tree canopies that will block sunlight anywhere from straight overhead to about 45 degrees off the southern horizon. Prairie plants can thrive with at least six hours of sunlight. With less sunlight you should consider more shade-tolerant woodland understory species. Water from downspouts will wash away mulch.

Consider the amount of sunlight your garden area receives (Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_altitude.svg)

Pick Plants

Peruse our Dyck Arboretum plant library and keep an eye out for our spring and fall plant sale lists. Have fun choosing the plants that fit your preferences with regard to season of bloom, flower color, height, dormant season texture and color, wildlife attraction, and more. See our website for further tips and ideas on landscaping with native plants.

Attention to these items in advance will make your native landscaping endeavor much more successful and enjoyable. Enjoy your winter planning during the darkest days of winter and signs of spring will be here before you know it!

A Love for Water: Reflections on Water Supply

Posted on November 13, 2014 by Brad Guhr

In spite of winter’s recent blast, I am feeling hydrophilic. It is true that I have a “strong affinity for water” as the definition goes. In a vocation working with water-dependent plants where Latin names are commonly used, the word “hydrophillic” (Latin hydrophilus, from Greek hydr- + -philos -philous) should be common vernacular.

It may seem silly to state this affection given that everyone knows human survival requires regular access to potable water. But it feels fitting to make this proclamation after experiencing a 2014 Kansas growing season of near average precipitation when rain fell regularly and nearly always when it seemed to be most needed. Our home lawn didn’t require much irrigation to keep from going dormant, our vegetable garden was especially bountiful, and the Central Kansas prairie was as lush and tall and colorful and productive with ripe seed as I have seen it in the last decade. With fresh memories of the scorching summers of 2011 and 2012, when heat and drought tested every Kansan’s resolve to maintain residency, I can definitely say that I…love…water.

I just finished attending the first day of the Governor’s Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas, where newly re-elected Governor Sam Brownback committed that a big part of his second term will be dedicated to development and implementation of A Long-Term Vision for the Future of Water Supply in Kansas. Kansans are fortunate to have access to plentiful groundwater in the western part of the state and surface water in the east. At the moment, we are fortunate to regularly turn on the tap for a clean, seemingly limitless supply of water – a luxury that costs less than our phone bills, cable bills, and electricity bills, but is far more essential.

The introductory statement in the Governor’s document issues a warning: “The writing is on the wall and if we don’t act today, our future is bleak. The Ogallala Aquifer is declining faster than it is recharging. Reservoirs, which are critical water storage structures for much of our state, are filling with sediment. At this rate, with no changes in the next 50 years, the Ogallala will be 70 percent depleted and our reservoirs will be 40 percent filled with sediment.” Most of us haven’t experienced a Dust Bowl in our lifetime or don’t remember the one we did. Hopefully, we won’t experience one in our lifetime, but odds are increasing that we will.

Wise Use of Kansas Water will be the topic of our Dyck Arboretum 2015 Spring Education Symposium. This symposium will explore the history of drought cycles on the Plains, the current status of our Kansas water supply, what steps are being taken to protect it, and offer ways we can better conserve it.

Stay tuned for more information. In the meantime, love water.

(Photos courtesy of Gerry Epp)

Make Your Favorite School an EPS School

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Brad Guhr

Kansas Earth Partnership for Schools (EPS) has become a flagship program at Dyck Arboretum of the Plains since we received training from EPS founders at University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum in 2006. Over the last eight years, we have enjoyed helping 173 teachers form 58 Kansas schools pass along knowledge of the prairie to more than 21,000 K-12 students.

Here are five reasons why you should share this post with a teacher or administrator and make your favorite local school an EPS school:

1. Kids thrive on outdoor, hands-on, project-based learning.

When students get the chance to learn by doing and are asked to solve a problem in an inquiry based way, not only do they learn and retain concepts more effectively, but they also have fun in the process.

2. Improve student health and environmental literacy.

Literature and studies show that each successive generation of students is becoming less connected to natural surroundings, more sedentary and more affected by real world problems, including attention deficit disorder and childhood obesity. The EPS Program helps schools address these problems.

3. Add environmentally-friendly landscaping, biological diversity and aesthetic interest to school grounds with prairie garden learning laboratories.

Once established, native plants survive, and often thrive, without irrigation, chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. They attract a host of insect pollinators and other wildlife too. Prairie gardens also give students outdoor laboratories where all subjects of a school’s curriculum can be enhanced.

4. Teacher training can be fun!

The EPS summer and winter teacher institute evaluations have clearly and consistently expressed that this Dyck Arboretum program gives teachers some of the most enriching, meaningful and enjoyable teacher training available today. And thanks to grant funding from generous donors, we have been able to provide this program with all of its follow-up support to teachers AT NO CHARGE.

5. Meet objectives of Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.

The new uniform national performance standards in schools are a reality for teachers and administrators, and the EPS curriculum has been fully correlated to these standards to give teachers a full toolbox of hands-on curriculum activities with which to work.

Tell your favorite teacher to check our website and put the next EPS Summer Institute on the calendar! If you have questions, or would like to schedule an in-service to learn more about EPS, please use our contact form, or call our office and ask for Brad.

Teenage Prairie

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Brad Guhr

Our prairie is getting all grown up. The 12-acre prairie reconstruction at Dyck Arboretum of the Plains known as the Prairie Window Project is reaching a noticeably new stage of maturity in its sixth year of growth. Deep root systems have developed to support a matrix of full-size grasses, a variety of colorful wildflowers, and a bounty of seed heads. For the first time, it looks like and gives the feel of being a REAL prairie.

Big bluestem growing in the Prairie Window Project

I can’t help but reflect on its numerous developmental similarities to those of my 14-year old son, Henry. Each involved preparation and planning, was nurtured with grand hopes and dreams, and required a significant investment of time and economic resources to shepherd them to their current state of maturation. Just as many lessons of my childhood and a rich array of ancestral influences have contributed to Henry’s development, the arboretum’s tallgrass youngster was conceived only after years of studying and modeling the local prairies of South Central Kansas and collecting seeds from over 170 plant species.

I even poignantly recognize that many of our Marion County prairie remnant seed sources near Lehigh laden with bluestem, blazing star, blue salvia, and goldenrod were the same prairies where my Grandpa Henry decades ago introduced me to prairie wonders such as rolling vistas of the Flint Hills, scissor-tailed flycatchers, and ruts of the Santa Fe Trail. It gives me great comfort to know that the remains of dozens of my ancestors in Marion County cemeteries, and maybe even mine someday, will be cycled through the 10-foot deep root systems of big bluestem, switchgrass and Indian grass many times over in the coming millennia.

Button blazing star and Indian grass in the Prairie Window Project

Henry and the Prairie Window Project have each benefited greatly from the work and support of many others along with some fortunate helpings of luck. They are beneficiaries of the nutrient-rich soils of Kansas, and both have surpassed me in height this fall. They have plenty of room to grow in complexity, mature and diversify, and I am coming to terms with the fact that most of my influence to shape these two beings has already been given. I marvel at what they have become in their young lives, and with great anticipation I will be watching what new developments are to come.

For more information on prairie restoration and native plants, please explore our website.