Dona Weifenbach and Neil Burgard’s prairie was not the realization of a lifelong dream of creating native habitat. It was a serendipitous outcome born of their desire for a bigger buffer from possible development on adjacent properties.

The quiet country life was always appealing to them. Their life together had begun in the early 1980s in a farmhouse rental on a 200-acre cattle pasture in Sunset in St. Landry Parish. After a few years there, they bought a smaller version of it nearby for their own, a 2.5-acre homestead with the original small farmhouse on it. Over the years they added wraparound patios and a second story. They planted trees for a windbreak, dug a pond, and over time Neil built them each a sanctuary on the property, Neil’s “Doghouse” for his music and jams with friends, Dona’s “Birdhouse” for quiet writing and nature watching. Dona had been a wetland biologist whose first career was in landscaping. Neil is a handy carpenter and musician who loves being able to play his guitars without bothering neighbors. 

When the 4.5-acre property next to theirs came up for sale in 2016, they couldn’t be sure that new owners would keep the land undeveloped. So they bought it, but without immediate thoughts of planting a prairie on it. It was also around the time Dona was retiring from her career with CPRA, the state’s coastal protection and restoration program. They knew they wanted some of the land to be for vegetable gardening and fruit trees since their original homestead property had become increasingly wooded, with shrinking sunny growing areas. 

It wasn’t long before Dona was considering a prairie restoration for the remaining few acres. She had always noticed birds visiting their homestead from the fields on both sides, more so as the woods closed in. That got her thinking about improving bird habitat on the new property. She had remained friends with her graduate school classmate, prairie ecologist Larry Allain, and her collaborator in native landscaping, Bill Fontenot. She knew she could count on Larry’s native bee expertise and Bill’s deep understanding of birds of our region, and both were excellent botanists. Soon she joined the Cajun Prairie Habitat Preservation Society and began bidding enthusiastically for Marc Pastorek’s prairie mixes at every annual auction.

Bill introduced Dona to the Acadiana Native Plant Project that he and his friend June Walker, a native nursery owner in Sunset, had been working with others to launch in 2016. June’s greenhouse had been where ANPP’s first season of propagation took place, in Spring 2017. When June passed away unexpectedly that summer, her family donated her last commercial greenhouse and her personal library to ANPP. The June Walker Memorial Greenhouse and Education Center is still the epicenter of ANPP’s propagation efforts in Arnaudville, in St. Martin Parish. Dona soon got involved and brought her wealth of knowledge about native plants and landscaping to ANPP. She learned more about propagation, on the job, thanks to June’s extensive notes. 

When it came to designing and planting her own 3-acre prairie, Dona turned to Malcolm Vidrine’s Cajun Prairie: A Natural History (2011) and the planting guide in Marc Pastorek’s seed catalog to learn what she needed to get started. She learned more about the plant species with Bill Fontenot’s Native Gardening in the South.  As a landscape designer, she knew her prairie would not be rectangular, and she wanted curved paths throughout the prairie for her daily bird and plant walks. The paths would be an easy width to maintain with their bushhog, and the paths could serve double duty as firebreaks for regular prescribed burns needed for maintenance. Generally, it is recommended that paths be avoided for large, minimally monitored restorations because paths create edge effects that facilitate weed encroachment. But Dona’s prairie was for her enjoyment and observations, and she knew she could monitor those edges and take action when needed.

She and Neil were reluctant to take the recommended herbicide shortcut to prep the site, instead opting to disc the soil lightly with a tractor several times over a warm season. Discing stimulates weed seed germination, and discing soon after plows them under. This depletes the weed reservoir and significantly reduces the threat weeds pose to newly planted prairies. Once the site was clear, they raked it and were ready to seed. Their sources of seed for the original planting were those seed mixes from Marc Pastorek that Dona won from the Cajun Prairie Society auctions, along with seed she purchased from Justin and Vernon Fuselier’s Coastal Prairie Farm in Eunice. They broadcast the seed by hand in early 2017. During those first years, Dona monitored for weeds and added plugs she bought from ANPP to fill any open spots and boost diversity. 

By 2019 there had been enough growth to provide the fuel needed for their first prescribed burn. They cooked a pot of gumbo and recruited their friends for the burn crew, some with plenty of experience (Michael Heineman, Bill Fontenot and Matt Conn), and some who just like to help and learn (like me). They set the burn date in February after birds had fledged the nests Dona had been watching. The weather and wind had to be ideal. Wind is needed to get the fire hot enough to reduce biomass, return nutrients to the soil, kill weeds and woodies, and boost germination of seeds of fire-adapted native prairie species. Reducing biomass is important so that sun can reach the soil where possible rare, small natives struggle to get a foothold.

They picked the day, called the troops to bring their shovels, and were ready by the time their fire crew arrived. Beforehand they had hauled water in a tank on a four-wheeler to the area, along with buckets with wet towels in case any fires jumped a boundary. Having those paths as breaks made the fire very manageable. Each section’s fire was started upwind since the winds were mild that day. In heavier wind, starting downwind slows the fire’s spread, making it easier to manage and producing a more effective burn. We started with a small section so the novices could get a feeling for fire behavior and how to handle it. In the best burns, the fire moves in a line hot and slow enough to burn all the plant matter and leave no patches, but not so hot that the soil microbes are killed or that animals cannot escape in front of it. There are always rabbits, field mice and birds that flush from the fires. Some habitat managers space out their burns in time and only do one patch at a time so that these critters are not without some cover nearby. The rebound growth after a burn is so fast that they quickly return to take advantage of the lush, nutritious greenery.

Dona and Neil have continued annual burns since 2017. This regimen manages weeds and encourages a diverse plant community in which bully plants like grasses are held back to give space and sunlight for smaller wildflowers that emerge. Dona had been monitoring and photographing the diversity and was pleased with the result. However, one section of the prairie in the back had raised her concern. The invasive vasey grass there was becoming more and more prevalent. They weren’t sure why. It could have been that it had not been seeded heavily enough there, or that it was wetter or lower than other sections. She and Neil finally gave in and applied herbicide on the advice of Steve Nevitt, a prairie restoration consultant based in St. Landry Parish. After the herbicide application, Steve replanted that section with his company’s local ecotype seed (Louisiana Native Seed Company), and Dona added plugs grown by ANPP. The first summer after the reseeding was a blaze of yellow rosinweeds, diverse mints, goldenrods, and even thoroughworts and false foxglove, all signs of a successful recovery. Dona will be monitoring it along with the rest of the prairie on her daily walks. She was amazed that the overly wet and cold spring of 2023 followed by a record drought that summer had no visible effect on her prairie. She saw not one wilted plant, confirming what we have all learned about how well adapted local ecotype prairie plants are for our region and extreme weather events.

Dona’s daily walks have given her a deep sense of the life benefiting from the habitat they steward. Dona has seen woodpeckers, screech owls and more recently, great horned and barred owls in their wooded homestead. She had always seen regular migrants like ruby-crowned kinglets, hermit and Louisiana thrushes in their woods, but now sees more meadowlarks and more diverse sparrow species nesting in their prairie. She monitors several bluebird boxes in the prairie that host several clutches each summer. Their purple martin houses, once they remove sparrow nests, support healthy families of martins every year. She has heard bobwhite quail nearby and hopes they move soon to her prairie. That’s when she will call her prairie a success.

Although they could have qualified for government cost-share programs through USDA (Natural Resources Conservation Service) and US Fish and Wildlife Service, they opted to self-fund their restoration to be able to act on their own schedule. Some of that decision was based on Dona’s paperwork fatigue so soon after retirement. However, the cost of the seed and replanting of the weedy section was more expensive than she had anticipated, so she might fund it differently in the future.