Welcome to
the MacKenzie
Compound

We’re the MacKenzie family, and we half-jokingly, all-lovingly call our home The Compound. That’s because ten of us live (and work) closely in this area, along with our dogs and a rotating cast of yet more family and friends.

We’re mostly natives of Des Moines and Iowa, though we’ll let you guess which of us are the transplants!

We’re also typical Midwesterners, in that we will shoot the breeze with just about anyone who walks up and starts talking to us. So feel free to stop and ask questions about the prairie or just to say hi!

Why We Ditched Our Boring, Old Short Grass for Really Exciting Tall Grass

We love the prairie.
But we also know that nearly all native prairie in America has been decimated over the past 250 years, for agriculture, transportation, and development. And it continues to erode. Tallgrass prairie is especially endangered—less than 4% of the original tallgrass prairie still exists, making it one of the rarest and most endangered ecosystems in the world. But as the old adage goes, the best time to plant a tree is 40 years ago, the next best time is today. And so we figured the best way to get more prairie tomorrow was to make more prairie today.

We believe it’s responsible land management.
Native plants have evolved over thousands of years to thrive in their given ecosystem. The plants we have in our prairie will eventually thrive on their own with no need for fertilizers, pesticides, or additional watering. That means no additional chemicals in our already-strained water system, and no wasting drinking water on dirt. Not to mention the birds, animals, bugs, and other wildlife that will be able to live in and eat from our lawn. Really, there are just a lot of good reasons why the prairie is a much better solution for Iowa’s land than traditional lawns.

We hate mowing the lawn.
We also thinks turf grass is silly. We wanted something that looked good but didn’t take any real effort or money to maintain. The area that is now prairie used to take a full hour to mow just on its own—let alone trim edges, pull weeds, rake leaves, and everything else needed to keep fussy English turf grass shining green against all odds in the hellacious Midwestern summer. The sheer amount of money, time, effort, equipment, and chemicals needed just seemed like a waste when the finished product wasn’t even something useful.

We like to keep it weird.
Listen, we’re somewhat intelligent, well-informed, modern adults. We know that turning over your yard in favor of stuff that most people would call weeds might seem kind of weird. But we’re into that kind of thing.