Imagine my surprise when leafing through the July 2008 issue of Martha Stewart Living (a guilty pleasure but it's summer after all), what to my wondering eyes should appear but a paean to prairie grasses and flowers ("Wild at Heart," pp. 90, 92, and 94) which even a domestic diva finds irresistible.  Along with a color portfolio of some particularly eye-catching specimens, the article extolled the virtues of the Curtis Prairie, a sixty-acre field next to the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison that the university began restoring in the 1930s.  It also managed, ever-so-helpfully, to point readers in the direction of a commercial nursery in Westfield, Wisconsin, which, following the university's lead, specializes in prairie flora.

Meanwhile in Houston, unbeknownst to Martha, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rescue the plant material from an overlooked pristine remnant prairie near Saums Road was in the offing, thanks to the eagle eye and determination of Flo Hannah, Senior Sanctuary Steward, Houston Audubon Society, and the enthusiasm of KPC's Community Education Manager, Jaime González.  Enabled by the generosity of Vincent and Eric Ho, the owners of the soon-to-be-developed tract, and expedited with the help of Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack and his able staff along with the Harris County Flood Control District, many of the rare and special grasses, wildflowers, and plants on the nearly 90-acre tract will be transplanted and saved. 

 
Thanks to volunteers from more than 30 environmental organizations - including KPC's own volunteers - many of the rescued plants will be transplanted on the Katy Prairie to establish a seed nursery and to create demonstration prairies on KPC's Field Office and Nelson Farms preserves.  The plants include some of Martha's favorites - Kansas Blazing Star, Black-eyed Susan, Purple Prairie Clover, and Rattlesnake Master - as well as some rare Coastal Prairie plants, such as Florida Blueheart, Colic Root, and Eastern Gamagrass. 

John Laine, a longtime resident of the Katy Prairie, who learned of the Saums Road transplanting project from County Judge Ed Emmett, agreed to donate the transplanting of 30 tree-mover-excavated spadefuls of prairie grasses to the nursery adjoining our field office.  KPC is also working to secure funding to hire ChipCo, a landscape company that has sod cutting equipment that can transplant 1,000 square feet of "plush" (one-foot deep) prairie "carpet" per day.  Transplanting the prairie through industrial-scale, mechanical means allows KPC to secure large, biologically viable, fragments of the prairie in one fell scoop, as it were, laying down the transplanted material side-by-side to prevent invasive species from forcing their way in edgewise.   See the community support section of this newsletter to find out how you can contribute to the Prairie Patchwork Fund.  

An alternative title for this month's report might have been "The Katy Prairie Goes Wild." Our hope is that as opportunities present themselves, which they seem to have a way of doing, prairie grasses and flowers, not cookie-cutter subdivisions, may end up being the last crop on the prairie.  So, with Martha's seal of approval, we'll keep on patching it together, here and there, a few acres at a time, wild style with the help of an invaluable new trove of "botanically correct" plant stock.

 

PS: For press coverage of the Saum's Road prairie rescue project, see: Liz Ann Peterson, "A Genuine Grass-Roots Effort," Houston Chronicle, 12 July 2008, p. 1A, and the subsequent editorial, "Leaves of Grass," Houston Chronicle, 26 July 2008, B8.  Also look for video of the 2 August rescue effort, coming to our website soon.

Mary Anne Piacentini