Yes! The city is totally cool with it.

As far as we could find, the city mostly cares about two things. First, the area between the sidewalk and the street must stay below 36”. Second, you can’t just stop mowing your regular grass and let it turn to weeds. It needs to be planted intentionally.

If everything goes as planned, it will eventually look pretty wild out there.

We have just about 100 different species of grasses, flowers, and shrubs planted in about 5,000 square feet. If you search Google for “tallgrass prairie garden”, you’ll have a good idea of what we’re expecting.

But the “final” look will be a bit of a surprise. We intentionally chose a more natural look as opposed to something manicured or designed.

And it will almost certainly change and evolve over the years, as different plants mature at different rates. No two years will look the same—which we think is really exciting.

First, it should be noted that we are not experts. Most of what you see in the prairie and on this site just came from reading a lot of articles and books about what the actual smart people are doing—monkey see, monkey do.

That said, we generally found three different approaches being offered out there.

The first would be to hire someone who can just do it all for you: make a plan, buy the seeds and plugs, perform the labor. There are a number of great landscaping and/or ecological consulting services in the area that have been working with native plants for decades and can do this on large or small scale.

The second would be to do it completely DIY. Find a spot where you want your native plants, clear it of any existing plants or vegetation, buy seed or plugs, then plant and go. With some basic gardening care, you will likely have decent luck.

The third option is what we did. We researched what kind of prairie restoration is going on, made our own plan for what we wanted, then hired an expert to help us asses our site, buy good local seed, and help share some of the labor.

It was a rather long, multi-step process.

Summer 2022

We researched as much as we could about prairie restoration. Then we started contacting experts for help assessing our site and sourcing good local seed.

Fall 2022

We started our project by simply killing all of the grass that was already there. We did this by spraying the grass with a “desiccant,” which is a liquid that helps dry out the grass blades so they stop growing. Once we were sure that everything had been killed, we then tilled the yard to break up the compacted soil and provide a suitable bed for our seed.

We then sowed about 75lbs of seed over the yard and crossed our fingers.

Winter 2022

After we tilled the yard and sowed prairie seed in the fall, we planted a mix of winter wheat and winter rye as a cover crop.

That helped prevent soil erosion, added additional nutrients to the soil, and helped keep the seed down over the winter.

There are a number of ways to accomplish these things, but we chose the cover crop.

Spring/Summer 2023

At this point, we let the prairie grow. Every month or so, when the prairie is about 18 inches tall, we will mow it all back.

This helps tell the native plants to use their energy to develop roots, while also helping kill off weeds and invasive species.

When you cut off the tops of weeds, they have no reserve energy in their shallow roots. In comparison, native prairie plants have very deep roots, so cutting them back won’t hurt a bit.

2024 and Beyond

Hopefully, by summer 2024 we won’t have to do much of anything. Once the native plant roots are established, we will just let the prairie do its thing.

Eventually, after five years or so, we will need to also conduct a prescribed burn. Burning is a natural occurrence on the prairie, and it helps maintain the overall health and balance of the prairie ecosystem.

For the first season (summer 2023) we bought a scythe. Yes, like a medieval grain-harvesting peasant, we will go out and slash down the grass by hand. We’ll see how it goes!

Almost every book and article that explains this step assumes you have a farm tractor, and can easily acquire a pull-behind mower to mow to a height of six inches. Clearly we live in the suburbs and do not have a farm tractor.

The only other option that we could find was $4,000 brush mowers, which we felt went against the general ethos of our prairie restoration.

So if you know of other eco-friendly options, let us know.

The main reason is that someone else owns the domain “littleprairie.com.”

But the selection of .io, as opposed to .net or .org or something else is because Dan works in tech, and it’s the domain that all of the tech startup Cool Kids™ use for their websites.

The term “i/o” is used in computer networking, but the domain itself was created for websites originating in the area surrounding the Indian Ocean.