• Introduction: Tall grass prairie
  

• Urban Prairies
  

• The Workshop
  

• The Material
  

• References
  

WELCOME

Historical Sites:

The tall grass prairie of Manitoba was once a vast sea of shoulder- high grasses that stretched all the way south to Texas, covering an area one and a half times the size of the province of Manitoba (CWHP, undated).  The early settlers and First Nations people would have witnessed and benefited from this vast landscape, considered to be the richest of all grasslands in North America.  It literally hummed with life including buffalo, elk, wolves, a few grizzlies, bees, butterflies, blackbirds, ducks, geese, grasses and numerous prairie flowers (CWHP).

But “the very richness of the tall grass prairie…spelled its doom” (CWHPa, undated).  Soon settlers were ploughing the prairie up and planting cereal and forage crops.  The vast 6,000km² tall grass prairie in Manitoba shrank to less the 1% of its former size over time, and now the only large remaining locations include the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve, Living Prairie Museum and Oak Hammock Marsh (CWHP, undated).

Many small organizations combine their efforts to change this steady shrinkage of the Manitoba tall grass prairie ecosystem.  Of particular interest are the Living Prairie Museum and Prairie Habitats.  Living Prairie Museum is located in Winnipeg, southwest of the airport, and encompasses 12 hectares of land (www.livingprairie.ca).  Prairie Habitats is a small, family-owned company whose goal is to conserve endangered native plants through encouraging people to plant native seed (www.prairiehabitats.com).  Each spring, they work together and offer native planting workshops at Living Prairie Museum, conducted by John Morgan of Prairie Habitats.

Area of Manitoba tall grass prairie remaining. Source: Morgan, Collicutt, & Thompson, 1995)