Whether you prefer comprehensive plans or verbal guidance, Prairie Works offers assistance through a variety of styles. Experience spans from large-scale watershed planning to detailed home landscape designs, ensuring tailored solutions that meet your needs and budget.

Comprehensive Plans

Project Management

Verbal Guidance

Property Compendiums

Property History Research

Priority Planning Exercises

Blending historic research, native plant expertise, and ecological design, we create landscapes that are beautiful, resilient, and deeply rooted in place. Using hyper-local plants and materials, each project enhances biodiversity, honors heritage, and strengthens the natural character of the land.

Minimalist in approach, PW designs lean heavily on the use of graminoids, carex species, and native materials. Plants tend to be short, and open viewscapes are a priority, resulting in a space eurythmic with its surroundings.

Landscape Plans

Ecological Restoration Plans

Hardscape Design

Historic Preservation

Bio-Engineered Erosion Control

Prairie Works has experience ranging from writing community comprehensive plans to urban forestry plans and park planning. Well-versed in community-based projects and the steps needed to engage stakeholders and citizens.

Park / Open Space Design

Urban Forestry Plans

Tree Consultation

Project Planning

SWOT Exercises

Meeting Moderation

Turf lawns give little back to nature. Converting those spaces into native vegetation is PW’s bread and butter. Customized, efficient, and rooted in the realities of each situation. Lawn to Prairies is suitable for a variety of spaces and offers many benefits for homeowners, communities, business spaces, and golf courses.

Design and Install

Custom Seed Mixes

Consultation / Guidance

Cost Savings Scenarios

Preserving the Driftless Area’s historic buildings and sacred spaces with expertise and care. Prairie Works blends research and design to honor each site’s heritage while ensuring its beauty and resilience for future generations. PW can align a network of craftsmen and contractors, managing their disciplines until project completion.

Consultation

Building History Research

Project Management

Historic Landscapes Plans

Priority Planning Exercises

Floristic Quality Assessments for natural areas offer data for best management practices and information for curiosity seekers. They are presented in easy-to-comprehend formats.

FQA’s (Floristic Quality Assessments)

Site Assessments

Land Evaluations

Land Management Plans

Plant Photography

Integrating natural spaces into the agricultural system is important and often provides great benefits to a farm’s overall profitability and aesthetics. In the hilly Driftless Area, its benefits are amplified and more needed. PW can work with farmers in many ways.

CRP

Filter Strips

Pollinator Areas

Woodland Management

Habitat

Custom Seed Mixes

Hill prairie remnants, algific slopes, cliff communities, limestone glades, springs, sand prairies, cold water streams, and former lead mines - the Driftless Area is a haven for micro-ecosystems. These niches require customized management approaches. PW has likely been involved with them before.

Plant Inventories

Management Planning

Education

Expert Opinion

PW has worked on several burial mound restorations and is involved in local archaeology efforts. The restoration and care of these spaces is highly gratifying and important. The Driftless Area abounds with these peculiar cultural spots, and the correct steps to their care are necessary. PW offers guidance and education for their restoration and stewardship.

Planning

Consultation

Industry Referrals

Nothing is more important to the maintenance of natural areas and native plant communities than fire. PW has safely led over 500 controlled burns in the Driftless Area since 2006. The science of prescription fire is endlessly fascinating, and PW enjoys imparting knowledge on the subject and is steadfast in ensuring they occur.

Burn Planning

Education / Presentations

Landowner Guidance