Category: Heroes | Accent on Natural Landscaping

WCHF Announces 2021 Inductee – Gary Eldred

April 6, 2021

Gary Eldred at the Schurch-Thomson Prairie 2020. Photo by Tim Eisele.

The Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc. (WCHF) has announced the selection of the conservation leader for induction in 2021. The inductee will be Gary Eldred – citizen scientist extraordinaire.

“I had been a hunter, fisherman, and trapper since I was twelve. I deeply enjoyed these outdoor activities and spent as much time as I could pursuing them. In the process, I became a skilled amateur naturalist and developed a strong interest in conservation. While in my mid-twenties, I was fortunate enough to read Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac. That new perspective on nature and conservation, especially the chapters on land ethics, began a subtle transformation of my thinking.” – Gary Eldred

Entirely as a volunteer, and teaching himself along the way, Gary Eldred has dedicated most of his life to the effort of identifying and protecting prairies. He is unique in being self-educated about prairie habitats and rare prairie species. Eldred has been instrumental in preserving and re-establishing thousands of acres of prairies in Wisconsin.

Eldred’s grassroots work became a conservation organization. In 1987, the local group he founded incorporated as a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating about, protecting, and restoring prairies and savannas. Networking by Eldred brought in two other nearby prairie groups and led to a change of name to The Prairie Enthusiasts (TPE). As of 2020, TPE has nearly 1,400 members and eleven chapters in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota. It owns and manages over 2,100 acres and has worked with landowners to protect over a thousand acres of prairie through conservation easements. And the number of prairie acres protected continues to grow.

Four Conservation Champions at 2021 Virtual Ceremonies

Our Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame Ceremony will “go virtual” on April 24, 2021, as we honor our newest Inductee, Gary Eldred. In addition, our three 2020 Inductees – Stephen Born, Jens Jensen, and Stanley Temple – will be honored since the 2020 Induction Ceremony was cancelled last April during the pandemic. This year’s ceremony marks the induction of our 100th conservation hero along with three others. Everyone is invited to participate and help us celebrate this milestone.

To sign up, go to Induction Ceremony.

Developing a Naturally Landscaped Yard

March 9, 2021

Donald L. Vorphal died on January 11, 2021. Photo courtesy of the Vorpahl family.

When I started to plan my prairie in 1986, I didn’t know what I was doing. In fact, I’m not even certain I understood what was a native plant. I learned about the benefit/necessity of surveying my property from Don Vorpahl. Don was one of the first native-landscape designers in Wisconsin and an early member of Wild Ones. His generosity in sharing what he had learned about the fledgling native-landscaping movement was immensely helpful, and I shall always be grateful for his ready counseling. He was a good friend of Wild Ones.

See his article titled “Planting a Woodland” in the Wild Ones book Landscaping With Native Plants.

Landscaping Design

I started developing my yard by surveying my property, and then as I planned to add to my natural landscaping, I updated my design. This gave me better control over what I was trying to achieve, instead of a “willy-nilly plunking in” of plants in our yard. We now have a very large prairie in our backyard (south) and an adjacent woodland in our sideyard (east).

Benefits of Native Landscaping

Where once we had 1-1/3 acres of lawn that took my husband all week to mow because of its soggy nature and Northland Creek’s tendency to overflow, he now has about an hour’s mowing. The rest of our week’s time is spent enjoying the birds, the insects, and the rest of the wildlife that frequents our beautiful yard. We are fortunate to have mature bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) and shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) on our site, so we built our prairie and woodland around them.

The summer storm that came through in July 2019 uprooted our green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) throughout our prairie. It’s always sad to lose a mature tree, but in this case losing the green ash was not so bad. When we planted our prairie, the trees were small and cast little shade on our back yard. But over the past 30 years, they have grown to an immense stature with a very dense canopy and have changed the dynamics of our prairie. Now the dynamics of the prairie will rebound. Never have I seen so many native plants spring up. The yellows, purples, and whites just crept up and filled in the spaces.

Where Did We Get the Native Plants?

Many of the prairie and shade plants in our yard came from plant rescues arranged through my Wild Ones chapter, Fox Valley Area. Other plants came from my chapter’s spring plant sales. Seed for the original planting came from Prairie Nursery. Subsequent overseedings have come from Wild Ones Fox Valley Area Chapter seed exchanges, Prairie Nursery, Wild Ones Fox Valley Area Chapter plant sales, and through the nursery catalogs that have become increasingly more available.

Growing Old

Donna and John's backyard prairie hosts many insects and a variety of other wildlife. — Donna and John’s backyard prairie hosts many insects and a variety of other wildlife.

As we grow older, our landscaping grows older with us. Soon, we may not be able to care for it as well as we do now, but our hope is that it will care for itself when we get to that point. I am also hoping that by then the invasive noxious weeds I’ve written about previously will have ceased to be a problem.

For more information about planting your own naturally landscaped yard, you can also read the book Wild Ones Landscaping with Native Plants on the EPA website.

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The e-mail photo is by Donna VanBuecken.

Helen Reddy

October 1, 2020

Australian-born singer Helen Reddy, whose hit “I Am Woman” became a feminist anthem in the 1970s and is still popular among suffragists today, died in Los Angeles on Tuesday afternoon. She was 78 years old.

To me, those ideals mean just as much today as they meant yesterday. Yesterday, feminism answered a cry for help to maintain my personality. Today it answers my cry for help to overcome the problems caused by my stroke.

I met Helen Reddy indirectly one time. This is my account of that moment.

Helen Reddy

The concert started at 8:00 p.m. It was a sell-out crowd. The audience applauded loudly when the curtain went up. It was supposed to be Ike and Tina Turner. All was quiet; they never showed up. The crowd waited and waited. Then the promoter stepped out and told the crowd that the band was delayed because the flight was delayed. He promised it would just be a little while longer, and he promised an excellent concert.

About a half hour later, the promoter appeared and said it would still be a little while longer, but they had arranged for entertainment in meantime. There was a singer from Australia who was making a tour and playing at the Lost Cork and Bottle (Las Cruces, New Mexico) and would graciously perform for us during the time we had to wait. The singer was Helen Reddy. She sang non-stop for forty-five minutes, but the crowd having none of it. They yelled insults at her and threw cups of soda. The promoter stopped the show and admonished the crowd for being rude and told them they should just sit there until the concert started.

The concert started about a half hour later. Ike and Tina played for an hour and then abruptly left. The promoter explained that Ike and Tina had fulfilled the contract, and went on to say that we were wrong to have been so rude to the artist (Helen Reddy), and that was why Ike and Tina had left.

Twenty-five years later, realizing that the incident had been a stain on the school, New Mexico State University sent an apology to Helen Reddy, recognizing the millions of dollars she had raised for Democratic political candidates, her role as Administrator for California’s Department of Parks and Recreation, and the way she had caught the unstoppable mood of the women’s liberation movement. (She became a naturalized American citizen in 1974.)

I remember the songs: “I Am Woman” 1972, “Delta Dawn” 1973, “Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress),” “Keeping on Singing,” “You and Me Against the World,” “Angie Baby,” “Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady,” and “Somewhere in the Night.”

I Am Woman

I am woman, hear me roar In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an’ pretend
‘Cause I’ve heard it all before
And I’ve been down there on the floor
No one’s ever gonna keep me down again

Oh yes, I am wise, But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price, But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong; I am invincible
I am woman

You can bend but never break me
‘Cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger, Not a novice any longer
‘Cause you’ve deepened the conviction in my soul

Oh yes, I am wise, But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price, But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong; I am invincible
I am woman

I am woman watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my lovin’ arms across the land
But I’m still an embryo With a long, long way to go
Until I make my brother understand

Oh yes, I am wise But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price, But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can face anything
I am strong; I am invincible
I am woman
I am woman

NPR has written a nice overview of her life Helen Reddy.

Lorrie Otto’s Birthday Anniversary September 9th

September 8, 2020

Queen of the Prairie (*Filipendula rubra*) grows in sunlight or shade, preferably in moist soils, but will grow in any soil. Its flowers are hermaphroditic, but the plant is also pollinated by many other insects. This is a tall, sturdy plant, and its spray-like pink flowers give it a regal appearance. Photo by Steve Maassen

September 9th would have been Lorrie Otto’s 101st birthday. Lorrie Otto – Queen of the Prairie. Lorrie Otto – the inspiration for Wild Ones. Lorrie Otto – an American Hero.

LORRIE’S STORY

Lorraine “Lorrie” Stoeber was born in 1919 near Madison, Wisconsin. She lived on a farm where she learned to love the soil and the biodiversity of the landscape. As a young woman who was tall and smart, she got involved in many things – from modeling evening gowns for wholesale houses to preparing to be a pilot in the World War II Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program.

She graduated from the University of Wisconsin and married her six foot, four inch tall boyfriend, Owen Otto, son of Max Otto who was a pioneer of contemporary humanism. They moved to a north Milwaukee suburb near Lake Michigan and a twenty-acre ravine called Prairie Chasm. In the 1950s when the chasm was to be sold for development, Lorrie worked with The Nature Conservancy to save the ravine.

In the 1960s, she took on DDT, and by now you know the rest of the story. See also Banning DDT.

After that, “Otto began encouraging suburban homeowners to maintain biological diversity and wildlife habitat. She taught natural landscaping classes at nature centers, colleges and technical schools, businesses and museums in the Milwaukee area. After hearing an Otto lecture in 1977, a group of nine women began meeting monthly to share information about natural landscaping. They called themselves the Wild Ones. Otto became their philosophical compass.” (WCHF)

The Wisconsin Historical Society has a collection of all her writings.

THE LORRIE OTTO SEEDS FOR EDUCATION PROGRAM

In 1996, Wild Ones Natural Landscapers, Ltd. honored Lorrie with a celebration and a program in her name – The Lorrie Otto Seeds for Education Program. Such an honor was so fitting. In all her efforts to save the natural landscape, her desire to save it for the children was the greatest and most important to her.

As part of that education program, grants are offered each year to non-profit organizations planning to develop an outdoor learning area. Applications for the Lorrie Otto Seeds for Education Program will be on hiatus for the remainder of 2020, due to uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Please revisit this Wild Ones site in 2021 for a grant application and for information on the new deadline.

Lorrie became the heart and soul of the natural-landscaping movement, and many of us remember her each year by donating to the Lorrie Otto Seeds for Education Program administered by Wild Ones.