“I spent a career, 39 years with a couple state agencies restoring prairie like this,” said Varland, a retired DNR regional wildlife manager.

“This ground in Milford Township was probably prairie originally. The Minnesota River Valley had a lot of trees but this site here was very probably prairie grass because of wildfire that came from the west,” he added.

Varland said his wife Carolyn is also very interested in pollinators and maintains a pollinator garden behind their home.

“We’ve lived here 40 years. This was all cropland. I planted a really small plot of prairie plants in about 1984 and Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Marlene Johnson came out to my backyard. I was (DNR) roadside coordinator back then,” he added.

Now the space is used to grow potatoes, onions, tomatoes, carrots, green peppers, red raspberries, and flowers including dalias Varland become very large when they bloom.

“We freeze the red raspberries and put them on ice cream mostly. It’s good,” he added.

A cutting garden includes day lilies and marigolds.

Varland’s large pollinator garden is almost a full lot. It contains a big variety of plants including bee balm (aromatic flower and foliage used in herbal medicine, teas, and culinary applications) that grows fast and spreads. They’re known for attracting bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.

Yellow Coneflowers are abundant. The native wildflowers deter animal and rodent pests, last for years and years as perennials and have medicinal value with echinacea in their roots.

Yarrow, also known as bloodwrot, carpenter’s weed, knight’s milfoil, old man’s pepper, nosebleed and staunchgrass, has very small, fine, feathery leaves. It helps the body detox through sweat, can aid anxiety and depression and can help with a runny nose and watery eyes caused by mold, dust, pollen and dander, helps deter mosquitoes and other biting insects, sooths bug bites and stings, helps wounds heal fast and can treat eczema and similar skin conditions.

Varland talked about the value of other plants in his big pollinator garden.

“Common milkweed is very important in the lifecycle of the Monarch butterfly,” he said.

“Little Bluestem is my favorite native prairie grass,” said Varland.

It has striking reddish-tan foliage, fluffy seed heads, is easy to grow, tolerates heat, drought, humidity, and feeds caterpillars.

Varland said creating a large pollinator garden include dealing with annual weeds.

“It looks good now but when you plant prairie, it looks like a weedy mess. It has annual weeds like Canada thistle and horseweed. It was a lot of hand work for a while. I used some herbicide until it grew to the point where it’s not a problem. It took a few years. Now, I mow it real late in the fall. I love it. It’s a hobby to me. I enjoy looking at it. The neighbors don’t complain at all,” he said.

Varland said he grew up in Radcliffe, Iowa. While working for the Iowa Conservation Commission in 1982, when he noticed an abandoned railroad bed being converted back to farm land.

Varland wrote a poem about it, “Ode to a Railroad Prairie.”

I saw something the other day that hurt me to the core. The railroad grade I used to hunt was leveled like a floor. The dozers and the scrapers, busy all last fall, prepared the land for cropping: “We have to farm it.”

In pristine times this land was home to creatures large and small. The wapiti, the blue-winged teal, a habitat for all. Diversity of plants was great; they grew from here and yon. Blue bluestem, rose, goldenrod, the list goes on and on.

The year of 1880 saw the finish of the grade. The pioneers were happy for the trains would help their trade. At the start this place was grass with many sloughs and marsh. The rails would help to tame this land that many thought too harsh.

That railroad helped to build the towns and people smiled with pride. The wetlands drained and uplands plowed. “Progress!” they all cried. Plot by plot, mile by mile, the prairie began to fade. In time, the only prairie left was found along the grade.

In recent years the trains were few, the tracks in ill-repair. That narrow prairie changed in spots, wild plum and elm grew there. Wild fauna clutched that single grade to meet their simple needs. Passing folks, some misinformed, that it a patch of weeds.

“What need is there for prairie?” we ask in hectic toil. The prairie is our heart my friend, it made our precious soil. We’ve plowed and cut that abandoned grade, but not without its cost. These prairie lands we oft forget are sadly being lost.