The Midco Prairie in downtown Lawrence bloomed with people during a celebration before the space opens to the public Thursday. Stewards have tips for early visitors on this tender ground.
The Midco Prairie, at 210 E. Seventh St., is a native plants park tended by Native Lands Restoration Collaborative.
Courtney Masterson, ecologist and executive director of the collaborative, said they want the prairie to be a space for the community to slow down and connect with more than 125 native plant species.
“What’s really going to be special about this place is you could be shopping downtown, or having a meal at your favorite restaurant, or grabbing a beer at your favorite bar, and walk right out the door into this place,” she said.
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Midco, located next door at 644 New Hampshire St., owns the land.
“For nine years, I would come here and look at that lot, and it was broken-up pavement,” Midco CEO Pat McAdaragh said Wednesday night.
He said he loves prairie, and the collaborative stood out to him because they weren’t just doing landscape transactions.
“There’s a lot of walkability around here, neighbors over there, downtown business neighbors — so I think there’s going to be a lot of peace and enjoyment there,” he said of the park.
Vivian Sanders, a retail manager with Midco in Lawrence, said she’s already enjoyed sitting under the maple tree on her breaks.
“I am excited about this prairie because do you see how it’s bringing the community together? And I mean, it’s a green space,” she said. “It’s somewhere to come out, to enjoy, to just sit, read a book, listen to music.”
Midco Prairie will be open to the public Thursday morning, but plants are still getting established.
Masterson said guidelines for interacting with the prairie will shift over time, but for the first year, folks should stick to the trails and refrain from gathering and collecting.
“(That’s) to allow the native plants to sink deep roots and create those networks underground that provide soil structure and prevent erosion, and provide habitat for the animals and fungi and the microorganisms that make our soil healthy and strong,” she said.
Once the plants are established, “if they can support the weight of a bison, they can support the weight of people,” she added.
The collaborative will host educational workshops to teach people how to gather food, medicine, fiber and seeds from the Midco Prairie. Some of those treasures will stock the Lawrence Public Library’s seed library.
Masterson asks all foragers to attend a workshop first to make sure everyone shares a definition of sustainability.
“If you want to take a sprig of a flower to learn more about that plant at home and develop a deeper relationship with it, that’s excellent,” she said. “Some people’s sustainable is, ‘Well, I left half.’ Well, and then the next person leaves half, and the next person leaves half, and before you know it, you have none.”
If a certain species abounds, the collaborative will put out the call to gather more than usual.
Masterson is particularly excited about thematic gardens, like the soil health garden with native legumes.
“They heal our soils. They feed the plants around them. They’re stunningly beautiful,” she said. “They represent important food to people and beyond.”
She’s also excited for folks to see native cacti and blue sage. The latter offers a pop of cornflower blue amongst the earthier tones of the season while supporting Masterson’s favorite bee: the blue sage bee.
There’s a prairie boardwalk made of tree stumps, and there will be mowed pathway that will move each year and allow folks to immerse themselves in the deepest part of the grasses.
On a wall to the side of the prairie, Mona Cliff, enrolled member of the Gros Ventre tribe (A’aninin/Nakota Nations), is working on a native plants mural.
The park will also have a bike rack, and the city is helping with an ADA-compliant bus stop, which Masterson says will increase accessibility so folks can learn about the plants and understand their cultural significance.
“Historically and certainly currently, the Indigenous peoples of this region have relied on and had deep relationships with all of the native plants of the prairies, woodlands, and wetlands of Douglas County, as we call it today, or northeastern Kansas,” she said.
Every single native plant has taught people something about food, medicine, fiber, dye and more, she said.
“There’s not a single native plant that hasn’t been a gift to people historically,” Masterson said.
She said the downtown park will be an anchor for the collaborative’s education efforts, as they’ve signed a five-year stewardship contract with Midco.
The studio of Karl Ramberg, a local stonemason, did all of the stonework in the park using native rock.
Ramberg quoted artist Bernard “Poco” Frazier to the crowd Wednesday:
“I am going to suggest that whatever our society amounts to in the future, however overpopulated and overcrowded and overbearing, there will perhaps be more and more need for a private space, a special place, an intellectually sacred place where the individual can somehow or other look into his own heart to see what he actually is.”
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Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at [email protected].
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