Friend of Gardening--Nina Wunderlich Creates Her Own "Prairie Patch"

By Gwen Podeschi, Christian County Master Gardener

Autumn winds stir the bronze wall of prairie grass into motion where a house once stood on West Prairie Street and a few late asters still show purple. "But to really see and enjoy the prairie, you need to get in the middle of it," says Nina Wunderlich. Standing in the middle of her prairie planting, a visitor knows this isn't the usual garden experience, but if that visitor leaves with a better appreciation for the wonder that was the Illinois prairie then this Taylorville gardener is happy. And that is what a garden should do for the person who tends and nourishes a patch of earth and makes it her own.

Nina was raised on a farm near Paris, Illinois. "Daddy bought a farm that had a dell on the back corner. In the spring it was covered with Virginia bluebells and buckeyes. We called it 'Bluebell Valley.'" She brought some of those bluebells and planted them under her dining room window when she and husband Ed decided to make their home in Taylorville. Those woodland wildflowers that disappear almost as soon as they finish blooming began a relationship with the native plants of Illinois that rewards Nina to this day.

Always curious about the original appearance of the Illinois prairies, Nina discovered the "Prairie Patch" at a visit to a Decatur home show. This unusual nursery is the brainchild of a retired professor and it markets prairie plants. The Wunderlichs visited the nursery in Niantic, brought home their first hundred plants in the back of a truck, and Nina's first prairie patch was born. It was a learning experience. "I pulled up a lot of the grasses I had planted at first. I just didn't realize how much they looked like any other grass, I guess."

In 1993, the south side of their home was a much sunnier site. "The trees were smaller," says Nina. "I'm really drawn to yellow flowers and I used a lot of them. It took a little encouragement from the nursery proprietor to get me to order some pale purple coneflower." Her brown-eyed Susans and gray-headed prairie coneflower thrived in the early years, so much so that they crowded her first grasses. The encroaching shade near this area has given her some room to experiment with woodland native plants like white, red, and pink trillium and she uses the flowering prairie plants still growing here as a cutting garden.

By 1998, Ed and Nina had bought the property across the street and she put lessons learned in her first praire patch to good use there. "I decided not to add flowers to the bigger patch until my grasses were WELL-established." She counts over 55 varieties of plants in her garden of native Illinois fauna, including five grasses. She can't name a "favorite" among her planting, but is proud to have recently added leadplant because "this is an important plant in any prairie colony." Royal catchfly has been a challenge. It is one of the few prairie plants to sport a red blossom and is in short supply. Patience is important as well as the willingness to accept that change is a very important part of the establishment of a prairie. Nina also realizes that her prairie is much smaller than an ideal prairie planting would be. "You really need two or three acres, but I just work with what I have."

When asked about how much work is involved, Nina says, "I do as little as possible. Weeding was more necessary at first, but not any more—there's just a dandelion here or there." She noted that there seemed to be more butterflies and other insects on the prairie side of the street this year, coming to visit New England asters and butterfly milkweed. Her prairie also provides this resourceful woman with materials for dry plant arrangements. Recently she's been creating a yearly arrangement for the Decatur office of the Rolling Prairie Library System. "Sometimes I just use grasses and sometimes I add seed pods from the flowering plants."

Vacations and trips afford the Wunderlichs a chance to visit remnant prairies and prairie restoration sites around Illinois and surrounding states. "At first you couldn't find many of these places, but we find more and more of them." Asked to recommend some of her favorites, Nina includes Decatur's Rock Springs Center, Wildlife Prairie Park in Peoria, and Goose Lake Prairie State Natural Area near Morris, Illinois. "Sometimes we happen upon these prairies and sometimes we go in search of them. It's interesting to return to these areas from time to time to see how things change and compare it to my own experience."

Christian County Master Gardener, Gwen Podeschi, conducts interivews with local residents who have a special talent, project, or landscape feature of interest. These interviews are then written up and published locally.