Creating a Midwestern Prairie Garden: Plants and Design

title: "Creating a Midwestern Prairie Garden: Plants and Design"

The tallgrass prairie that once covered 170 million acres of central North America is among the most diminished ecosystems in the world. Per University of Illinois Extension, less than 1% of the original tallgrass prairie remains in fragmentary form. In the place of the prairie, Midwestern gardeners grow Kentucky bluegrass — a grass native to Eurasia — that provides almost no ecological function.

A Midwestern prairie garden is not a recreation of the original ecosystem in a backyard lot. It is a designed planting that borrows the prairie's plant palette, community structure, and ecological function — pollinator support, soil building, water infiltration, and winter wildlife habitat — at whatever scale is available.

Per University of Minnesota Extension, prairie gardens work because the plants are adapted to the Midwestern climate: hot summers, cold winters, periodic drought, and highly fertile loam soils. They ask for almost nothing once established and return reliable performance for decades.

Table of Contents

1. Prairie Garden Design Principles
2. Soil Preparation and Weed Control
3. Seed versus Plugs
4. Prairie Grasses for Midwestern Gardens
5. Prairie Forbs (Flowering Plants)
6. Plant Selection Table
7. Establishment and Management Calendar
8. Common Problems
9. Frequently Asked

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