A Backyard Prairie: The Hidden Beauty of Tallgrass and Wildflowers

by Fred Delcomyn, James L. Ellis

Overview

All the makings of natural wonder in your backyard

In 2003 Fred Delcomyn imagined his backyard of two and a half acres, farmed for corn and soybeans for generations, restored to tallgrass prairie. Over the next seventeen years, Delcomyn, with help from his friend James L. Ellis scored, seeded, monitored, reseeded, and burned these acres into prairie. In A Backyard Prairie, they document their journey and reveal the incredible potential of a backyard to travel back to a time before the wild prairie was put into plow rows. It has been said, “Anyone can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie.” This book shows us how. 

The first book to celebrate a smaller, more private restoration, A Backyard Prairie offers a vivid portrait of what makes a prairie. Delcomyn and Ellis describe selecting and planting seeds, recount the management of a prescribed fire, and capture the prairie’s seasonal parades of colorful flowers in concert with an ever-growing variety of animals, from the minute eastern tailed-blue butterfly to the imperious red-winged blackbird and the reclusive coyote.

This book offers a unique account of their work and their discovery of a real backyard, an inviting island of grass and flowers uncovered and revealed. We often travel miles and miles to find nature larger than ourselves. In this rich account of small prairie restoration, Delcomyn and Ellis encourage the revival of original prairie in our backyards and the patient, beauty-seeking soul sleeping within ourselves.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809338184
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	07/09/2021
Edition description:	First Edition, 1st Edition
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	1,015,352
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Both Fred Delcomyn and James L. Ellis serve on the board of directors of Grand Prairie Friends, a conservation organization in east-central Illinois involved in prairie restoration projects. Fred Delcomyn, a certified master naturalist and professor emeritus of the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois, is the author of Foundations of Neurobiology along with numerous scholarly articles on insects. James L. Ellis, a botanist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, manages and maintains the University of Illinois Natural Areas . He has published extensively on prairie ecology, conservation, restoration, and management.
 

Read an Excerpt

Introduction
 
It’s safe to say that the foundations of the backyard prairie, this book, and the friendship of the coauthors were laid in the year 2001. Fred Delcomyn and James Ellis did not know each other then, but in that year Fred and his wife Nancy bought a five-acre tract of land just south of Urbana, Illinois. Half the tract was wooded, mainly black walnut and hackberry with a house nestled among the trees; the other half was being farmed.

The transformation of the farmed half to prairie was accomplished over the space of two years. Visitors to the backyard prairie occasionally ask how it came to be. After all, most people, when buying five rural acres, do not immediately think, “Let’s plant a prairie!” Fred and Nancy, though, being avid outdoors people, thought that it would be interesting if the half being farmed were restored to a landscape resembling the prairie that once covered more than half the state of Illinois. Since they love natural places and were well acquainted with the long history of prairie in east central Illinois, it was an obvious step to think that planting something resembling the tallgrass prairie that had covered the land two hundred years ago might be both interesting and visually appealing. As it was, walking out the front door and seeing soybeans or corn just beyond the flower garden was not very appealing, and the income from farming was minimal.

In 2003, after some research and with help from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and its Acres for Wildlife program, the farmed area was seeded with prairie grasses and wildflowers. The adventure had begun.

A critical element in historical prairie was fire. That’s where James came into the picture. Fred and Nancy knew that their new prairie should be burned periodically. Some investigation soon identified Grand Prairie Friends, a local conservation group, as an organization that could provide not only advice but also help in managing prescribed burns. James was a little taken aback by Fred’s initial email, which we can paraphrase as, “Your website is outdated; are you still a viable organization?” It was not quite that brusque (Fred is usually more polite), but that was the message James remembers. James was then (and is still as of this writing) the president of Grand Prairie Friends, and he enthusiastically agreed to help manage the new prairie. His day job at the time, a botanist with the University of Illinois’ Prairie Research Institute, gave him a unique perspective on prairie plants and what it takes to keep them healthy.

Volunteers from Grand Prairie Friends conducted the first burn of the entire prairie in late February 2005, two years after the initial seeding. It was a complete success, although at one point it was a bit unnerving to see smoke and flame nearly obscuring the nearby house. Grand Prairie Friends, an organization Fred and Nancy quickly joined, has burned a portion of the prairie every year since then, keeping the prairie ecosystem in good health. The annual burns also provide a wonderful spectacle that has been awe-inspiring to many friends.

To understand the origins of this book, fast forward to 2010. Fred and Nancy periodically showed visitors their flourishing prairie, not only people affiliated with Grand Prairie Friends, but also others who had no special interest in prairie. Reactions ranged from great surprise that such a beautiful prairie could exist near a city to wondrous appreciation of a reconstructed natural area. Because the reaction to the prairie was keen interest from both friends and prairie experts, Fred and James decided to write an article on the prairie for a local magazine. The article was a great success, and led to the idea that many more people could gain an appreciation of small prairie if we were to write a whole book about it.

There are other books on prairie. However, these typically concentrate on prairies that encompass hundreds or thousands of acres. Consequently, the books inevitably leave the impression that only very large projects are being undertaken and only large projects can lead to an appreciation of the enormous expanse of prairie that once covered most of central North America.

Our experience with this one small 2.5-acre recreated prairie, and with small remnants of original prairie in east central Illinois and elsewhere, leads to a rather different conclusion. The beauty of nature is everywhere - you just have to know where to look for it and how to appreciate it.

The goal of our book is simple: to show the beauty found in a small prairie. We meet this purpose through photographs and text. Most of the photographs were taken in or near the backyard prairie, and the text flows from the experience of observing this prairie over a decade and a half.
We hope that by looking through our eyes and reading our words you will also appreciate this beauty and will be inspired to visit and take a closer look at the small remnants of prairie that can be found throughout Illinois and its neighboring states where the tallgrass prairie once thrived. If you are, this book will have more than fulfilled its purpose.
 

Table of Contents

List of illustrations ix

Foreword May Berenbaum xiii

Introduction 1

1 Glimpses of the Past, Reality of the Present 5

2 Farmland to Prairie 19

3 Fire 25

4 A Rainbow Landscape 35

5 Six Legs and Eight 49

6 Feathers and Fur 63

7 Seasons 73

8 Open Sky 89

Further Reading 105

Sources 109

Editorial Reviews

"[This book] provides an abundance of information and insights into the development and maintenance of a small prairie. An extensive 'Further Reading' section is also provided to help the reader with locating prairies to visit or how to start building a prairie of one's own. After reading this book, I am inspired to build my own little backyard prairie or at least go visit some of the flourishing prairie lands situated throughout our prairie state to appreciate all they have to offer in any season of the year."—Elizabeth I. Kershisnik, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society

“Cultivating and learning about the rich life of the prairies, grasslands that once occupied most of the Midwest, inspired in Fred Delcomyn and James L. Ellis a love and appreciation that they transmit beautifully through the pages of this lovely book. Their adventures come alive here, providing a model for others eager to understand the plants and animals, the original inhabitants of the lands where we live and farm today.”—Peter H. Raven, coauthor, Biology of Plants
 
“For anyone even remotely interested in nature, A Backyard Prairie provides a wide-ranging view of prairies and prairie ecology. More important, it includes the very personal experience of creating from scratch a landscape that once dominated Illinois. Delcomyn and Ellis are to be applauded for providing readers with an intimate glimpse into the wild heart of the state.”—Michael R. Jeffords, coauthor of Illinois Wilds

“What a terrific documentation of the joy, wonder, consternation, and eventual gratification that come from a personal prairie restoration project! This book is a great read for anyone who is considering restoring a prairie, has already done so, or is just prairie-restoration curious.”—Chris Helzer, Nebraska director of science, The Nature Conservancy
 
“A Backyard Prairie is more than a well-written story about how two people planted a diverse prairie on a small piece of land in northern Illinois. It is also a rich accounting of where North American prairies came from, what comprises them, how they change through the seasons, and what their destruction has meant to biodiversity and to us. A Backyard Prairie is meant to be inspirational—and it succeeds!”—Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home and Nature's Best Hope
 

“A Backyard Prairie is an excellent publication that does a lot with a little. I mention this in terms of the slim size of the book, but also in relation to the landscape itself: a 2.5-acre restoration of a tallgrass prairie and its indelible impact on human expectation. Not only do the authors show an effective restoration project at a residential scale, but they also persuade the reader that this is actually the most realistic scale for restoration because it links humans and their lands through long-term practices that bind people to place.”—Rosetta S. Elkin, H-Environment

 

From the Publisher