The Silver Plains Project is a prairie acreage that is being replanted with flora that is indigenous to the Tallgrass Prairie of the Great Plains of North America. This is a long-term project that is part way along. It will be a number of years for the planting to be more or less complete.
weeds?
Native plants are mostly disregarded in Canada and the United States. To the majority of people they are weeds; wildflowers if they’re being kind. While visitors to national, provincial, or state parks are usually amazed at what Nature offers, indigenous plants are generally not considered worthy of gracing private or public yards. A handful of native plants — such as purple coneflower, ninebark, and potentillashrubby cinquefoil — are sold in nearby garden centres but they are vastly outnumbered by plants that are imported from elsewhere on the planet.
Weeds: canada thistle (pale purple), curled dock (rust), sow thistle (yellow).Many alien plants, whose origins are across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, are also called weeds:
Some have escaped from gardens and crops. Others tagged along with bags of grain and such; they were inadvertantly introduced into North America. A goodly number of plants — that were either deliberately or accidentally introduced — have invaded both domestic yards and natural landscapes.
We concur that these latter plants are weeds. We strongly disagree with including native plants in that category.
brush cut versus long hair?
mowing the yard
An expanse of mowed grass looks tidy and serves to highlight plantings of showy flowers and shrubs or trees that adorn so many yards front and back. Lawns in cities are essentially monocultures, something which doesn't occur naturally. In rural settings, large yards are mowed as much for weed control as for aesthetic reasons. But, what most mowers of lawns don’t realize is that:
Mowing causes *weeds* such as introduced clovers, thistles, and dandelions to increase in numbers.
We are taking an opposite approach:
Instead of the prevailing form of expansive lawn with pocket gardens this yard is being planted with expansive gardens and pocket lawns.
Tallgrass Prairie ~ 08SE21
yardigen
There is a difference between a prairie restoration and the Silver Plains Project:
With regards to the selection of material, restoration projects are site specific. Once started, they are generally left to the vagaries of nature. They may be managed with occasional prescribed burns and / or trucking in of cattle to do some grazing but they are not cared for like a yard around a home or business. More importantly, what would be spread over a much wider area (or excluded) in a restoration proper is being compressed into two hectares, including a wet garden which will not survive in its present location without someone to turn on the water.
More closely caring for what could otherwise be considered restoring, using such a wide gamut of material and ecotypes in a relatively small area, and the addition of elements that require regular attention sets this project apart from restoration.
While this planting will be tended, the garden areas will not be massed plantings typical of the current norm: *horticulturalThe current term for the perpetuation of Victorain era "Landscape Gardening".* landscaping as it’s called.
The objective is the creation of communities of plants which will, one day, emulate components of what was here before the advent of the plow.
We could describe what we are doing as a demiwild indigenous garden however the phrase is clumsy. Calling it a wildergarden sort of fits but the word is too long and it overstates the case.
Calling this project a yarden would work to indicate the inversion of the dominant form:
Big lawn with pocket plantings to big planting with pocket lawns.
But yarden is a common name and it dosesn’t infer the essential component of indigenous. However, that is corrected by inserting “ig” (soft “g”) into the word, which results in:
yardigen.
It is short, to the point, and embodies all of the concepts here.
what to plant?
Researching flora (and fauna) native to southern Manitoba and the Great Plains of North America has been a divergent
experience for two former city folk. The world-wide web was browsed and some books were
readA partial list of sources is on the *regards* page.
on the subject(s). A list of species to include was started. Then places like the
Agassiz Interpretive Trail,
the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in southeastern Manitoba, and
Lake Bronson State Park in Minnesota were visited.
As well, more flora was discovered by driving around the local area and walking the ditches. Too, as the site is worked, additional
material spontaneously presents itself for inclusion. The listAddition of the following number of species
is planned for the site:
32 ~ grasses
122 ~ wildflowers
26 ~ rushes & sedges
31 ~ shrubs & vines
——
211 ~ total keeps getting longer. While there are more than 200 plants planned for inclusion here (with around
120 already on site), more will be added along the way. The amount and diversity of material is astonishing.
why are we doing this?
At the outset it seemed the thing to do; the idea evoked a sense of joy in us. After a few years of research, learning, and planting we have come to see for ourselves the beauty of the native plants. They have a look of rightnessSubtle though it is, the native plants often seem to glow while most introduced material doesn’t; it’s kind of like the difference between gold and brass. to them. They look, not surprisingly, like they belong here.
As this website documents, the transformation of this property is way more work than we could have imagined. But it is becoming a remarkable presentation of amazing flora and the array of fauna it attracts.
Robert G. Mears
August 2010
