Vermont Cemetery Prairie - an Illinois Nature Preserve

Native Americans lived on this prairie until the early eighteen-hundreds. Indeed, during the Black Hawk War of 1832, local Potawatomi helped protect the settler folks they considered their allies in the nearby Napir Settlement (now Naperville). In 1843, European immigrants (including some, it is said, from Vermont) laid out one acre here as a cemetery. Holes were dug, and people were buried, but this one acre was never plowed for corn. After each digging and grieving, the natural diversity slowly healed. At some point, the cemetery was abandoned. 

The word "Prairie" got left out? If you look closely (upper right), you can see a black, wrought-iron fence that now surrounds the one-acre original prairie and one acre of painstakingly restored buffer.

It was here in 1961 that Professor Robert F. Betz discovered the concept of the cemetery prairie. In many counties, an occasionally mowed cemetery was the only remnant of the original landscape. (See Endnote 1.) Betz educated neighbors and soon began to cut brush and to burn again. Was Vermont Cemetery the first real prairie that scientists worked to restore? It was certainly an influential one.

At the time, fire was strictly banned from preserves managed for nature. I once asked Betz (Northeastern Illinois University) why he and his collaborator Ray Schulenberg (Morton Arboretum) thought fire might be good for it. Had they learned from the prairie burns pioneered by Aldo Leopold and other professors at University of Wisconsin in Madison who demonstrated its need during their corn-field restoration experiments during the 1940s? He said something like “Well, no, the thing is, we knew a bit about the prairie. We had long discussions about it. I think it was Ray that urged the burning. Ray had had experience with Native Americans.” So, I asked Ray Schulenburg if it was his idea, and he said something like, “We learned it from Madison.” Of course, Ray was nearly pathologically humble and always gave credit to others. 

The cemetery’s title was finally cleared up by the Natural Land Institute, which then as owner dedicated it as an Illinois Nature Preserve in 1999. Title was then transferred to the Will County Forest Preserve District, which acquired 24.4 acres of buffer, former cornfield. At that point, forest preserve staff wisely invited Espie and Don Nelson to be the volunteer stewards. (For a more detailed timeline, see Endnote 2.)

In a remarkable footnote, Don and Espie talked with descendants of the farm family that had owned the adjacent land. It turns out that Betz and Schulenberg weren’t the first European-Americans to burn there. The farm wife who lived nearby had tired of gunshots from hunters in the abandoned cemetery, so she had the thatch burned off every fall so the rabbits and their hunters would move elsewhere. Her fires gave prairie recovery a head start. Betz, and the Nelsons, and Will County have burned annually. This prairie seems to have been burned annually for well over sixty years, perhaps the longest anywhere? 

Irreplaceable remnants deserve resolute protection and good management.
But nature should be for people too. We need more of it. (See Endnote 2.)

The left half of this photo is original prairie; the right half is restoration. The restored acre is more flowery today, but where most flowers bloom at any given time depends on which species are in bloom then. Today blooming "showy tick-trefoil" colors up the right half. Tick-trefoil is a species that does especially well in restorations. But a close-up look shows more rich diversity on the left.

In the center of the original remnant, prairie coreopsis blooms and buds are starting to open on flowering spurge and lead plant. The big leaves are prairie dock. 

What’s the best way to steward a one-acre gem nature preserve? The Nelsons first resumed weed control and burning; then they marked out a surrounding additional one acre that they would lovingly restore with seed from the remnant. When the Forest Preserve District took down Betz’ cyclone fence and put up the wrought-iron, they included within it the Nelson’s buffer. This prairie now has a one-acre core remnant, one-acre high quality buffer inside the fence, and another 23 acres of restored prairie outside.  Rare animals and plants with larger populations have better chances to survive and evolve in response to changed air quality, rain composition, and climate. Multiplying the size by 24 does not ensure sustainability, but it vastly aids it. 

When you stand on the line between remnant and buffer, there’s no mystery where remnant stops, and restoration begins. A drop of a foot and a half marks the step from remnant to former cornfield. Some people claim that steep little slope represents the amount of soil eroded away during the century of farming. Don points out that there are other possible explanations; perhaps the farmer’s plough turned the soil away as he plowed right up to the cemetery edge. In any case, the demarcation is clear. 

Espie and Don started restoring that acre of buffer about 2004. They broadcast seed from the remnant for about three years. Because they found just a few seeds of nodding wild onion and western sunflower, they gave the seed they did find to Possibility Place Nursery, which grew the plants in little pots. The Nelsons then planted the year-old plugs among the weeds and seedlings from the broadcast seed. 

After a mere 15 years, the vegetation of the painstakingly restored buffer is still strikingly different from the original prairie (see photo and caption below). “In the buffer we can carefully step between the rarest plants,” says Espie. “In the remnant, there’s no spot to put down your foot, except on quality plants.”  

(As I write, it’s a bit strange to look at this photo on my computer. When I was studying the vegetation, I had no awareness of fences, power transmission lines, or subdivision housing. I was in the ancient ecosystem and looked at this little universe of prairie, as in the next photo, below.)

As Matt, Espie, Don, and I study the vegetation, we look for clues that might teach us. To consider the species that bloomed first – like prairie betony, bastard toadflax, and shooting star – we have to push aside the heart-leaved Alexanders and phlox that bloomed next – and the tick-trefoil and coreopsis blooming now – and the pre-bloom foliage of the leadplants, tall grasses, and blazing stars that will bloom later.

Above, the original prairie is the right half of the photo and the restored buffer is the left. Most species are present on both sides. But we find much more white prairie clover, Leiberg’s panic grass, shooting star, prairie phlox, prairie dock, prairie betony, and bastard toadflax in the original. By rhizomes, the toadflax is slowly moving out into the buffer.

We pull sweet clover as we go; Don says, “We don’t come inside the fence without some important reason.” Today our feet trample, but we repay the ecosystem by pulling invasives. Of course, the steps of bison, bear, native Americans and others had impacted the prairie for millennia, so what’s wrong with feet? But there are now so many of us and so little nature; prairie gems left accessible for people’s trampling lose quality rapidly. (See Endnote 3.) 

What are the major challenges facing the stewards today? Troublesome patches of second-priority invaders (for example Convallaria and Hemerocallis) are apparent here and there. But bigger threats approach from outside. Birdsfoot trefoil, teasel, crown vetch, and reed canary grass could do major damage. All run rampant in the nearby landscape. All need herbicding by trained stewards – to push them as far back from the fence as possible. When Don or Espie finds trefoil or vetch, they treat it and mark it with a stake, so they can return later to make sure they got it all. 

Forest preserve staff work on this too, especially in the outer 23 buffer restoration. Don says, “I think the staff wish we’d take on those acres too, but between our 30 acres at Lily Cache Prairie (see Endnote 4) and the two acres inside the fence, we have enough."  

Endnotes

Endnote 1

Following the discovery here, Betz scoured the countryside for old cemeteries. Some of them turned out to have some of the best surviving remnants, for example Weston, Loda, Beach, and Temperance Hill Cemetery Prairies ... and also savannas.  

Endnote 2 - Timeline assembled by Don:

"This is probably way more detail than you need ... but I wanted to get it straight in my own mind:

1.    Early transfers of the farm land surrounding the cemetery were done "minus the burying ground".  Any original records for the cemetery have been lost long ago.
2.    ~1930    The family who owned the surrounding farm land began annual burning of the cemetery in the fall (after harvest to discourage hunting in the cemetery).
3.    1961      Bob Betz and Ray Schulenberg begin management of the prairie    .
4.    1970     A cyclone fence is erected around the original acre.
5.    1998     FPD of Will County acquires title to the cemetery.
6.    1999     The cemetery becomes a Nature Preserve.
7.    2003     The 24.4 acre buffer is purchased.
8     2004     Restoration of a one acre portion of the buffer, surrounding the original acre, is started using only seeds collected from inside the cemetery.
9.    2011    Restoration of the remaining 23.4 acre buffer is begun using commercial seed.
10.  2012    The old fence is removed and the present fence is erected enclosing both the original acre and the one acre buffer.

As far as I can tell the cemetery has been burned in the fall almost ever year for about 80 years!"

Endnote 3 
In the long run, prairie doesn’t survive best as tiny gems. Trampling degrades some sites. Some little remnants have footpaths through them, which most people stay on. But for both scientific and political reasons, we need restored natural areas so big that kids can play and adults can flatten from time to time for whatever adults do. We need prairies big enough that we can be the bison. Some rare plants do best with various kinds of disturbance, that they may not get when prairies are treated as gems. Nachusa (with its bison) and many forest preserves (with their people) will help us learn more about such issues. But the last few endangered remnants are not the place for those experiments, at this time.  

Endnote 4

This post is the second of a series of three that arose out of Matt's visit with the Nelsons. The first introduced the Vermont prairie and the importance of the Illinois Nature Preserves System. The third considers Don and Espie as people and their "other child" - Lily Cache Prairie, which they "created" themselves, and to which they also brought Matt and me that day.

Thanks

To Eriko Kojima and Kathy Garness for helpful proofing and edits.