Backyard Prairie

Bumblebee and Joe-pye Weed

After moving to a house in a new development, my yard was a blank slate. I took the opportunity to bring a little bit of the Sycamore Greenway home, and fill my yard with native prairie plants. Well, "fill" might be a bit optimistic at this point, but it is an ongoing process.

Native plants are good for wildlife: the birds and pollinators in our area evolved together with these native plants and are uniquely suited to use them for food and habitat. Over the winter, I enjoy watching the progress week after week as goldfinches pick the coneflower heads clean of seeds. Frogs, grasshoppers, and other little guys can be seen and heard among the dense shelter below the leaves.

Gray-headed Confelower with bumblebee

Honeybee and Butterfly Weed

This afternoon, I watched a female Monarch flutter around my garden for an hour or so, laying eggs on the various milkweed species and sipping nectar from the other flowers nearby. Meanwhile, honeybees and bumblebees visited the fragrant Joe-pye Weed and assorted tiny flies darted about the smaller flowers. Every year, a few Monarch caterpillars make their way several yards from the garden to the house, to adorn my siding with their jewel-toned chrysalis pendants.

Monarch and Ironweed

Though I try to limit the plants allowed in the garden to those native to Iowa, not all of them can be found on the Greenway. A particular favorite, Blazingstar (Liatris sp.), I have yet to see on the Greenway, which may have something to do with the ravenous rabbits (who destroyed mine until I fenced them out from the buffet).

A few of the plants I've invited in the past couple of years have yet to flower : the Compass Plant and Cream False Indigo are both biding their time, developing their deep root systems to ensure they can weather whatever comes their way before bothering with reproduction. Others, like the Butterfly Weed and Gray-headed Coneflower, grow and flower vigorously, though they may be less long-lived than their cautious neighbors.

Liatris (apparently delicious)

Monarch caterpillar munching
Butterfly Weed

Plants of the prairie are tough, broad-shouldered and strapping. They have to be, to handle the searing heat of Iowa summers, the bitter cold of winters, drought, floods, and the occasional wildfire. They are not sissy-plants, those delicate prima donnas that require careful placement and coddling. They can handle neglect, because this is their home turf.  Invite them into your yard, and you will be rewarded--and you can have a little bit of Greenway to enjoy outside your window, too.