Prairie Park Nature Center 2730 Harper Lawrence, KS DEMO GARDEN: Creating safe habitat for suburban wildlife using healthy gardening practices and making residential landscapes more sustainable.     First, we got together with park director Marty Birrell ... to discuss ideas for the new garden, which will be a great resource for city and suburban dwellers to learn how to make their little corner of the earth more ecologically sound. Then we came up with a proposal and a design. The new design for the front of the Prairie Park Nature Center is chock full of great ideas for homeowners looking to beautify their homes in an environmentally friendly way.  Vinland Valley Nursery has been working with Prairie Park Nature Center staff to redesign landscaping at the entrance of the park building as a green landscaping demo garden for visitors to visualize things they can take to their residential gardens that will : ° add year round beauty and value to their property ° create valuable habitat for wildlife ° utilize native plants that thrive in local conditions and provide food for wildlife ° utilize drought tolerant plants that conserve resources ° grow plants that require no special chemicals to grow, and be otherwise low maintenance ° add unique hardscape materials that are made from recycled products Next, we held a big party to raise some money for the project!  Over 300 people attended the benefit concert at Vinland Valley Nursery featuring local band Truckstop Honeymoon!  Huge thank yous to Mass Street Music and The 23rd Street Brewery for their kind donations to the benefit concert!   $570 was raised for the Friends of the Prairie Park Nature Center.

Celie Davison and Molly Weisgrau raised $82 for their pet project, the Jane Goodall Institute. They had beautiful hand made soaps for sale and sold every last one! Global Café served great food until every last bowl was licked clean.

WORK DAY #1  On November 3rd, we held our first community work day at the park. About a dozen people gathered to help disassemble the existing gardens, salvaging native plants and relocating them to other areas of the park and removing most of the plants that had overtaken the beds. After about three and a half hours of work ...
	... we had a clean slate!

 If you are interested in being a part of our next work day, email us! We're happy to have helpers. Our next work day will involve installing some of the larger plant material.

 The nature center will be offering some
green gardening classes this spring, so look for these new offerings
when you plan your spring activities!