Plant some Little bluestem

“Little bluestem is one of the most widespread and important of all the prairie grasses.”  Wasowski, 2002.

Little bluestem, Schizachyrium scoparium var. scoparium, is a well behaved and attractive addition to your nature garden.

Features

With blue-green, delicate grass leaves, fluffy seed-heads, and attractive fall and winter color there are plenty of  reasons to plant little bluestem.

Habit

Schizachyrium scoparium [...]

Is your garden naturally captivating?

Hike Kansas by earlycj5

“The prairie is absorbing, captivating, even overpowering.” – Alison Kerr, 2010

Natural landscapes are captivating in a way most gardens are not.

What can we learn from the Kansas prairie which we can apply to the design of our nature gardens? Wouldn’t we all like a garden which is captivating?

How a natural landscape [...]

Gardening with Prairie Plants

Gardening with Prairie Plants is a book by Sally Wasowski. Of all the “how to” native gardening books I’ve read this is my out and out favorite. It’s a definite inspiration, full of wonderful detail.

Subtitled “how to create beautiful native landscapes“, if you live east of the Rocky Mountains, you’ll want to add this [...]

The Cost of Prairie Restoration

Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) by earlycj5

Most of Kansas was once covered in prairie. Only 4% of North America’s original prairie remains today, with 80% of that in Kansas (1). But what of the costs of prairie restoration? How is prairie brought back, assuming we want to? Let’s look at an example of Kansas prairie [...]

Prairie Dog Myth

Black-tailed Prairie Dog by Paul Carroll

The black-tailed prairie dog, Cynomys ludovicianus, is a resident of western Kansas as well as parts of Montana, the Dakotas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona.

This means you will not find black-tailed prairie dogs in eastern Kansas where I live. But that’s not the prairie dog myth I’m talking [...]