Initially, 400,000 square miles of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem once covered the North American Continent. Of that, less than 4 percent remains. That 4 percent is scattered in relatively tiny portions, called remnants, two of the largest in Kansas at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve and in Oklahoma at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve there.

There are a few tiny prairie remnants in Indiana, mostly in cemeteries which have never been planted in anything but what was already there. The nearest one is right here in Tippecanoe County - the Granville Cemetery near the Granville Bridge.

Purdue University classes and other groups and invididuals visit the cemetery to see what a prairie remnant looks like. Unless one is familiar with the plants found there, it doesn't look like much more than an overgrown cemetery. But to those of us who value the historical preservation of the prairie plants, it is a glory to behold.

Winterhaven Farm at 5724 S 900 West was 13 acres in the 400,000 acres of tallgrass prairie that once covered the Midwest and other portions of the continent. So in planting tallgrass prairie grasses and forbs here, I am truly restoring what was once tallgrass prairie.

Coming soon

Coming soon