For years I have wondered why Europeans find American prairie planting so aspirational, while Americans will go to great lengths to create a semblance of Northern European gardening (often referred to as English) in the US. Can it be as simple as “the grass is always greener”? On researching locations for Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden, I had a call with plantsman Jack Pizzo, who lives on 40 acres of restored wetland prairie, an hour west of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. During that conversation he said that with all the choices we have, human landscaping is chaotic. Restoring an ecosystem, on the other hand, involves following what the natural landscape is telling you. Fewer choices, less need to control, less chaos: I had found the key to the book. My actual visit to Jack’s prairie garden, with the photographer Caitlin Atkinson, was quite a trip.
Photography by Caitlin Atkinson for Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden.
Above: Jack Pizzo’s house and textured garden in Illinois, surrounded by the straight lines of neighboring farms.
Having been briefed to travel all over the States—south, west, and points in between—I found myself thinking about the Alfred Hitchcock film North by Northwest while driving down a long, straight highway, between long, straight lines of beans and corn. A crop duster plane flew toward us as we ducked off into a curved driveway through prairie grassland. Spraying on the neighboring farms takes place on still days, when chemicals will not drift over the boundary and be wasted.
Above: The curved driveway through a prairie garden surrounded by 38,000 acres of industrial farming.
A bona fide American prairie, at last. Jack’s academic background is in ecology, and he is actively passionate about planting for birds. He’ll plant an American hazelnut with the hope of attracting the brown thrasher (successful); he creates open spaces and puddles to attract the golden plover. A farm puddle is a “fuddle,” and traditional (pre-industrial) farms would have incorporated more of these relaxed spaces. Jack is re-forging relationships between animals and people, since any prairie, meadow or grassland, is made and maintained by people.
Above: Jack Pizzo and Jack Pizzo Jr. guiding us through the garden.
The day of our visit was very hot and humid and I was given some Wellington boots to swoosh through the grassland that surrounds Jack’s house. “You can wander anywhere, there are no paths,” he told us. The plants bounce right back after trampling: “Be like bison; walk side by side.” The ground is damp since this is restored wetland, which was never particularly suitable for straight farming.
Above: “If you have the plants, you have the bugs; if you have the bugs, you have the birds.”
Jack’s prairie is simultaneously a garden and a farm. He is a farmer amid other farmers because he grows native plants and distributes their seeds through his land restoration business. He rails at being called a landscaper for the reasons mentioned above: in restoring the land, a natural pattern and logic has been able to emerge, and it’s about habitat. To this end, he has seen 170 bird species in the garden and nine species of amphibians and reptiles. In amongst the 250 native plant species, there are at least five different roses: Carolina, Illinois, swamp, tall pasture, and Arkansas rose. Seven types of milkweed (whirl, common, swamp, butterfly, mountain, green, and green-horned) attract monarch butterflies that rest here in their hordes, en route from Mexico.
A perhaps surprising fact with all this abundance of life is that even roses come back after fire, with their long roots left intact underground. Jack lays out his thoughts on controlled burning in the book but here is a taster: “The prairie is only there because of fire (think of lightening strikes). Native American ecosystems are not fire tolerant but fire dependent.”
Above: Short buffalo grass around the house allows vistas and gives some breathing room amid the tall grassland plants. All of this landscape is controlled by fire, even the buffalo grass.
As more and more native plant species pop up, they are allowed to make incursions into the ever-shrinking lawn. Buffalo grass (cut eight times per year) fills less than three quarters of an acre out of 40, with long roots that add to the complex underground system that helps to make a prairie resilient in drought, thunder storms, and fire. Compass plant, a totemic plant of a thriving prairie, has roots of 20 feet and can live for 100 years.
Above: The carbon sink that is Jack’s farm. According to the University of Minnesota, an acre of established prairie stores one ton of carbon, with 97 percent sequestered underground.
Between Jack’s land, which he began to restore twenty years ago, there is a 36-inch drop down to the land next door. It is a stark illustration of soil being built up versus soil being depleted after years of tilling (Jack’s land was never intensively tilled). “From my land to the neighbor’s land is 36 inches down,” Jack told us. “That’s the loss of soil carbon.”
Above: There are at least four types of native oak on the property: bur, red, white, and swamp white.
Trees have a place here, making this a savanna landscape. It is multi-layered, with grasses, forbs, shrubs, and trees. Every bit of space has a purpose; it is the opposite of chaotic. And it was the best garden I’ve ever visited, ever.
Above: Just before a wild storm rolled in. The next day, the prairie looked exactly the same.
Above: Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden hits bookstores on October 14, but you can pre-order now.
For more on the book, see Announcing Our New Book: ‘Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden’.
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