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Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
How three Iowa lands became home to restored prairie
Planting native plants rebuilds natural habitat and supports wildlife
Jul. 30, 2024 7:23 am, Updated: Jul. 31, 2024 8:32 am
CEDAR RAPIDS — When Rich and Marion Patterson bought their home near Cedar Rapids in 2010, a lone magnolia decorated the manicured front lawn. Today, their home sitting on 2 acres is surrounded by restored prairie, planted in sections over the years including the latest in 2020.
“We have reduced mowing by probably 70 percent of the area here, and created a very diverse, very beautiful habitat,” Rich said.
According to the Government Land Office’s original public land survey of Iowa, prairie covered about 23 million acres of the state in the 1850s. But 80 years later, fewer than 30,000 acres remained, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Iowa is the most altered state in the country.
In response, some land owners are turning lawns and former farmland into restored prairies to support wildlife and improve environmental health. Those who have made the commitment say the restored prairies take far less of their time than maintaining a manicured lawn, but take years to take root and grow robust.
Here are the stories of three restoration projects:
Patterson Prairie, Cedar Rapids
Rich worked as director of Indian Creek Nature Center for 36 years, and Marion has been a lifelong teacher for “prenatal through senior citizens” in a variety of environments. Both Pattersons are freelance writers, including for The Gazette, and Rich does some natural area consulting.
For the Pattersons, planting prairie meant making the earth healthier since prairie plants store carbon in their roots, stems and leaves. Plus, it was a rebellion against “boring” yards. Peer closely at the grasses and lanky stems of prairie flowers and you’ll find hustling and bustling bugs, like a bumblebee wiggling its body through a wild bergamot flower and butterflies diving in and out of the tall grasses.
“It’s more rewarding and every single day when we go outside, you just see different things,” Marion said.
“We have taken a monoculture of exotic plants — that was the lawn — and we have replaced it with plants that have been here for thousands of years that do not need fertilizer and pesticides, that do not need to be watered,” Rich said.
Froyen Prairie, Knoxville
Near Knoxville in Marion County, retired high school biology teacher Curt Froyen maintains about 80 acres of restored prairie on his own — with occasional help of a bright-eyed high school student.
Froyen became interested in prairies after taking a course on prairie management and native plant identification in 1970 at the University of Northern Iowa. A year later, he was drafted into the Navy and served until 1976. Afterward, he moved to Knoxville and decided to buy some farmland.
“When I finally got a chance to purchase this land, my wife and I decided, well, let’s do something to try to help our native species,” Froyen said.
Throughout his career as a biology teacher, he used his property as an outdoor classroom. These days, home-school students visit a few times a year for educational experiences.
In 1985, Froyen began enrolling land into the Farm Service Agency’s Conservation Reserve Program and transforming the corn and bean farmland into restored prairie. The federal program pays farmers a yearly rental payment for land that is removed from agricultural production and planted with species that improve environmental health, like prairie. Froyen’s goal is for his land to never be plowed up and returned to row crops.
“I like the idea of the Conservation Reserve Program which allows us to keep some of our most highly erodible acres covered with plant life. … I decided, well, I might as well put it into something that would benefit wildlife,” Froyen said.
Today, he enjoys the bobolinks and dickcissels that live on his land. Their presence alone is rewarding.
“If you don’t have that type of grassland, they just won’t be there … and the restored prairie is just exactly what they’re looking for,” Froyen said.
Irvine Prairie, Dysart
UNI’s Tallgrass Prairie Center is in the midst of a 10-year prairie restoration project near Dysart on 292 acres of farmland donated in northwest Benton County by Cathy Irvine in honor of her late husband, David. Cathy also established the Irvine Fund to support the reconstruction. A permanent easement on the property was established by Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation for perpetual conservation of the land.
“This is a long-term commitment. That kind of financial commitment is not something that most people can afford to do,” Tallgrass Prairie Center Director Laura Jackson said of Irvine’s donation. “So it really is a very, very special gift.”
The center is restoring the land in pieces, taking on 30 acres a year. Since 2018, 130 acres have been planted, Jackson said, with 55 acres added in the last two years. The land donation allows the center to experiment with seed mixes and reconstruction techniques.
Research and restoration program manager Justin Meissen said that some wild plant species are not well-suited to being produced agriculturally, and that limits what seeds commercial growers are able to stock.
“We’ve done a lot of new transplanting of species, so we’ve been working with Laura (Fischer) Walter who’s our plant materials program manager here to get some of these plants that are not yet in the commercial seed industry that we do think have a lot of promise,” Meissen said.
What goes into planting prairie
In order to restore prairie, the land must start as bare ground.
“That’s usually the reason for failure that I see, is people underestimate how hard it is to start from a clean slate and how important it is to have basically no competing plants when you start a prairie,” Meissen said. “So that’s why starting a prairie reconstruction right out of corn and soybeans is probably the easiest and kind of simplest way to start.”
Tallgrass Prairie Center’s website has resources for those looking for native seed mixes and transplants.
The next ingredient for success is patience. It takes a few years for prairies to get established and reach their full blooming glory.
The Pattersons invested about $1,000 into the seed and ground preparation for the prairie section they planted in 2020.
“And a year later it’s like, oh my goodness. We wasted our money,” Rich said. “You see some weeds. You don’t see very much.”
But with each year, the prairie became more robust.
Now in its fifth growing season, “It’s gorgeous and it will continue to diversify and look better for at least the next three or four years and then be more stable,” Rich said. ”So to get it really good is a seven- or eight-year process.”
Prairie grasses have roots that can extend to as much as 15 feet. These root networks absorb water and combat runoff.
“With so much concern about flooding and big storms, people can put in what we call pocket prairies, just small areas, because not everybody wants to do a great big space like we’ve got,” Marion said.
Gardeners with less land can make an impact by growing plants native to Iowa.
“Any time someone is trying to put in a few natives, whether it’s a tiny plot in their yard or … on their farm or a space … anybody can do it and it really makes a difference,” Tallgrass Prairie Center’s Jackson said.
Maintenance-wise, burns or haying keeps prairie healthy. Burns remove litter from the surface of the soil, eliminates woody species and returns nutrients to the soil.
“Fire isn’t necessarily the only way to accomplish those things,” Meissen said. “There’s a long tradition of haying. Annual haying being a good way to both remove litter and open up the soil to the tallgrass prairie regeneration from seed.”
Once established, prairies don’t take a lot of time to maintain because nature takes its course, Froyen said.
“But we need more (people) doing this sort of thing. It takes a lot more work to maintain a yard of bluegrass than it does to maintain a yard of native plants. I spend more time mowing my lawn and taking care of that and trying to keep dandelions out and all that sort of thing than what I do in maintaining acres and acres of prairie.”
Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com
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