Restoration effort targets native plants

Terri Casey   /  Correspondent

Generations ago, before agriculture changed the look and feel of the Palouse, the area was a prairie filled with native grasses and wildflowers.

Today less than one percent of the Palouse is prairie, and that small remainder is gradually being consumed by new housing.

But at the base of Paradise Ridge, south of Moscow, one family is cultivating and reintroducing indigenous prairie grasses and flowers to their own land and making them available to area gardeners and landscapers.

Jacie and Wayne Jensen live on Wayne's family's 3,400-acre farm near Genesee, Idaho, and a 100-acre portion of their farm is rare prairie land on Paradise Ridge. In 2004, after having trouble finding quality seed for restoring acreage rescued from noxious and invasive weeds, such as cheat grass and ventenata, they began collecting seed from native plants on their property.

"Wherever you take out weeds, you have to put something else in," Jacie Jensen says. "We used the main native bunch grasses: bluebunch wheatgrass, Idaho fescue, blue wild rye and Sandberg bluegrass."

In spring 2005, the Jensens seeded rows of 10 prairie wildflowers in a seed-increase plot, and since then they've added more species each year and moved some of the plants into acreage to produce bulk seed.

The native-seed venture is a creative affair: To plant and harvest the grasses and flower seed, the Jensens have used anything from a combine to a Shop-Vac. Longtime friends help at the seed plots in spring and fall, and sons Guy, 21, and Carl, 20, manage weeds during their summers home from college. An old garage was converted into a seed cleaning and storage facility housing dozens of tall bags of seed as tiny as fresh-ground pepper. A refrigerator in the corner of the building holds envelopes of more seed.

Last spring, the Jensens formed Palouse Prairiescapes, selling a selection of 18 individually potted grasses and wildflowers from their "Pioneer Series" – plants that historically flourished from the Rathdrum Prairie near Coeur d'Alene to the Camas Prairie near Grangeville and that come up fast and without fuss.

The "Palouse Prairie in a Flat" was available at four area nurseries: Westwood Gardens in Rathdrum, Blue Moon Garden and Nursery in Spokane, Prairie Bloom Nursery in Pullman and Fiddlers Ridge Garden in Moscow. At Westwood Gardens, Jacie Jensen taught an evening plant-orientation workshop accompanied by wine and cheese, and at Prairie Bloom Nursery she offered a Saturday morning class.

The plants in the flat included some character, such as prairie smoke, a member of the rose family that stays green most of the year and in spring sends up a pink blossom that develops what Jensen calls "Dr. Seuss hair." The 2008 flat will include some more: Oregon sunshine, a thick, low-growing silver-gray plant that gets covered with yellow blooms; and sticky purple geranium, the original geranium of the Palouse prairie, which when mature flings its seed five to 10 feet. To their plot this summer the Jensens also added buckwheat, a lovely ground cover, and taper-leaf penstemon.

The flat will create a native grassland habitat of about 25 square feet, and gardeners and landscapers who wish to prepare areas this fall for planting the native prairie grasses and wildflowers next spring can follow some simple steps.

"These plants have several positive qualities: They're drought-tolerant, so after the first year, they won't require watering, they do not like fertilizer and they'll keep weeds out," she says.

But starting with a weed-free area is key: Pick a full-sun or mostly sunny, open spot, and treat it with Roundup in fall and spring for thorough weed-killing. People who want to avoid chemicals can lay down plastic, Jensen says, but it takes a full year with this method to truly eliminate weeds. Like the establishment of native plants in the wild, native seed production is a slow multi-year process. "The first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap," she says.

The Jensens' goal is to create a supply of quality, certified seed stock so that these hardy prairie species are available for use on public and private lands. The certification, provided by the Idaho Crop Improvement Association, assures that the seed comes without weeds and that genetic identity and purity is preserved. In one or two years, they hope to provide bulk quality certified native seed to the market through Clearwater Seed, in Spokane and Clarkston. Starting May 1, the Palouse Prairie in a Flat will be available for about $60 through the same nurseries as last season.