View of Burnham Centennial North (a work in progress)
This site is directly south of the Burnham Bird Sanctuary. All of our sites have been planted by Pizzo & Associates, but some (like this one) are still in the process of being restored.
Some notes from this site: it was super super weedy (meaning lots of invasive plants) and the soil was very dense and clay-ey (I keep using this adjective, I should find a more legit one.) A lot of brick and concrete pieces showed up in the samples, suggesting that this site was a dump or building site pre-restoration.
There were a bunch of trees on the site, which meant that a lot of adorable sugar maple seedlings showed up in the plots. Prairie restorations are generally burned every few years, which was how prairies were maintained as grasslands naturally long ago. Burnings keep tree seedlings like these from developing into full trees, and prevent lawn grass and other invasives from growing rampant as well as removing dead plant material to make room for new growth. Once you’ve been stabbed by enough dead cone flower stalks from last year’s plants, you start to get why burnings are a good idea!