Wexford Prairie
Immediately behind our home is a five-acre community property. It was a primary attraction in our decision to buy the house. The land that touches our lot was designated by the developer as a “prairie,” but it was a “prairie without a plan.” In the large photo opposite, our house is labeled, and the large, mowed park is immediately obvious. To the left, the darker green area is the prairie. On close inspection, the mowed trails are apparent.
In the first years, projects to add trees and burn the prairie area attracted community interest. By each July, however, the prairie became a big thistle patch and attracted the interest of only one farm boy who had learned to hate thistles as a child. Ken would cut thistles, spray thistles, and curse thistles.
By 1992, the Wexford Neighborhood Association president had heard about Ken’s work on the thistles. He stopped by to talk about the original goal of a “prairie” and soon he and Ken had prepared a grant proposal to the City of Madison for funds to buy proper prairie seeds. They were given $750 for those seeds and that was the beginning. In the subsequent 30 years, Ken has continued the thistle war and supplemented it with hand-collected seeds, spring burns, weed tree removal, and mowed trails.
In the lower left photo taken in the fall of 2020 at the height of COVID, a well worn trail is visible on one of the paths, indicating a summer's worth of active child traffic through this community prairie.
While the occasional burn helped, seeds blew in from the nearby woods and became saplings and then trees. After Ken’s retirement in 2014, he began a systematic clearing of the encroaching trees. The larger cordwood was taken by neighbors for firewood, and the brush dragged out for streetside city pickup.
While the prairie is overwhelmingly green through mid-June, the weeks thereafter are a continually changing display of color.
The purple Verbena hastata come into sharp focus above, as do the white and purple echinacea. Below a coneflower and purple spiderwort mingle with yellow prairie ragwort.
Above a pale pink prairie shooting star aims for the sky, a purple patch of Dame’s rocket is floriferous though not a native, and a graceful bloom of Culver's root emerges. Below, the grayhead coneflower Ratibida pinnata with its lemon yellow petals adds a touch of sunshine.
In the upper left corner is a bud of an emerging pale purple coneflower, Echinacea pallida, also shown on the bottom of the opposite page. Next is common milkweed flower, Asclepias syriaca, and the seedhead that develops by autumn. Milkweed is common in the prairie and is supportive of our Monarch butterflies.
Standing proudly upright, a native white yarrow Achillea Millefolium seeks attention, competing with brilliant purple Echinacea, while a Monarch alights on a lilac monarda. Below, Echinacea pallida, so elegant on its slender long dark stems and bearing a minimum of long petals, is a counting opportunity for kids!
The upright blooms of both Amethyst-purple liatris and white Culver's root are beginning to open, while two bees gather nectar from the yellow prairie stamens. Clusters of lilac Monarda fistulosa, also called wild bergamot, contrast with the hazy golden mix of blooms behind them.
This yellow cup plant Silphium perfoliatum towers up to 8 feet high, its opposing leaves designed to catch the rain. A single monarda shares a patch with the purple verbena, and yellow petals rise like helicopters toward the sun. A sea of purple asters rolls over the hillside as fall sets in.
An unusually hot pink liatris glows brilliantly among its peers, taking on the starring role in the cast of prairie plants. Monarda seed heads stand upright in front of the sunny, lemon goldenrod. Rudbeckia dot the prairie with golden blooms in high summer.