A youth participant spreads native prairie seeds at Capital Springs Recreation Area in Dane County, Wisconsin during Earth Day 2025. Volunteers in the county collected, threshed, and cleaned more than 3,100 pounds of prairie grass and flower seeds of 169 species during the 2024 harvest. Photo provided by Dane County Parks.
It’s late summer, but the dry grassland already displays autumn’s palette of washed-out greens, glowing yellows and golds, countless hues of brown. A bevy of volunteers of all ages, with large sacks suspended from their shoulders and shears in hand, move slowly across an open field of prairie. From time to time, one grasps a desiccated plant, snips off its seedhead, drops it into the sack, then moves on. At the end of the field, they empty their sacks into waiting, larger bags, stretch their backs, take a drink, chat and joke a little, then spread out to return from whence they came across the next swath of grassland.
They are collecting the seed heads of Golden alexander (Zizia aurea). Only Golden alexander. That is today’s objective. Yesterday it was False sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides). They moved through the field more slowly then, but their sacks filled quickly. Tomorrow it may be Pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida). That only sparsely populates this prairie in South Central Wisconsin, so the work then will be more like a hunt.
The seed gatherers are cooperating with staff of the Dane County Land & Water Resources Department. Some of these volunteers pitch in through various other seasons of the year, gathering, processing and cleaning seeds in late summer and autumn, helping to formulate seed mixes or cut out woody invasive species in winter, participating in prescribed burns in spring, perhaps rooting out invasive weeds in summer.
Collecting native grass and prairie seeds is one of the many ways volunteers work with professional conservation staff to rebuild, maintain, and expand prairies and other natural areas in Dane County, Wisconsin. Click on the video to learn more.
Thousands of acres of prairie lands in Dane County, across the country, and throughout much of the world literally depend upon volunteers like these for their restoration and very survival. Collecting native prairie seeds is one of the most labor intensive and critically important of the volunteers’ activities. Painstakingly gathering this genetic material is key to restoring greater species diversity to existing prairies and converting farmland back to prairie. To purchase this valuable native crop would be prohibitively expensive, costing millions of dollars.
Coming full circle in small but growing patches
Through countless millennia before the white settlers came, nature and fire and sometimes the Native American inhabitants maintained vast prairies, savannas, and wetlands spanning much of what in the United States today consists of farmland, towns and cities, roads and highways. Then came the iron-shared plow, drawn by horses, its point held steady by the strong arms of men, women, and older children. Slicing furrows through the deep sod, it began the transformation from prairie to cropland and progress.
Now, relatively small patches of the former prairies are being restored through the efforts and contributions of volunteers and trained professionals, donors and taxpayers. It’s a different kind of progress. The scale is much smaller than was the 19th century opening of the West, but, like the pioneering movement, its advance depends upon the willingness and energy of people to make it happen. That’s because what nature once managed very well on its own can be maintained in our modern world only with the help of human beings. Across America and around the world, conservation clubs and “friends” groups contribute time, money, and love to restoring and maintaining natural habitats.
Dane County is blessed with 17 formalized “friends” groups, each of which is typically associated with a specific park or nature preserve and “probably a couple thousand volunteers that come through our parks every year,” explains Lars Higdon, one of the county’s two botanists and naturalists.
The county owns about 15,000 acres (6,100 hectares) of parkland and manages approximately another 4,000 acres through easements, a legal mechanism that keeps land in private hands but transfers certain rights relating to land management and public access to the county. Restoring prairies is stated in its Climate Action Plan as one of many efforts to reduce Dane County’s carbon footprint. About 10,000 of those acres consist of “natural areas,” Higdon says. But, in a very real sense, they are only as natural as human intervention can make them.
Enter the volunteers
That’s where the volunteers come in. “Some of those are one-time volunteers,” he continues. “Several hundred of them, I would imagine, are repeat volunteers that come out many times. And sometimes they’re out in our parks nearly every single day doing work to maintain the areas that they’re interested in. So, it really runs the whole spectrum from one-off volunteers – maybe they’re coming with a corporate group that they’re involved in or a school group – to very dedicated, very knowledgeable and engaged land stewards who are out there nearly every day throughout all seasons of the year joining in the different tasks that we do.”
Susan Gruber is one of those dedicated, knowledgeable, and engaged land stewards. She has been a volunteer at Pheasant Branch Conservancy for more than a quarter century, but has been getting her hands dirty, too, at many other of Dane County’s parks and in almost every volunteer activity imaginable.
Pheasant Branch Conservancy embraces 682 acres on the edge of Middleton, Wisconsin that are protected wetland and prairie. Parts are owned by Dane County Parks, the City of Middleton, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. The Friends of Pheasant Branch Conservancy is a group that grew out of a 1995 legal fight over the municipality’s plan to pass two sewer lines within the bounds of the conservancy. The community effort quickly grew into an organization that today has some 600 members and is principally responsible – financially and through volunteer work – for managing a large part of the conservancy.
Susan fondly remembers the Pheasant Branch natural area from her childhood. Her father had been involved with a community effort to restore the natural habitat there, and today the conservancy is literally in her backyard, as Susan lives on its edge.
The Friends of Pheasant Branch Conservancy provides a good example – to Dane County and the world – of what a dedicated group of volunteers can do, and especially when working in cooperation with a small core of public sector professionals knowledgeable about and dedicated to ecology, habitat restoration, and community outreach.
To view an inspiring history of the Friends of Pheasant Branch Conservancy, click on the above.
Collecting native seeds is a major activity and requires a lot of working hands. Susan explains that member of their Friends group are typically joined each year by other community and school groups and individual volunteers. Several hundred young people from Middleton High School come out to help. In addition to meeting Pheasant Branch’s own needs, much of the gathered seeds go to the county. The Friends also maintain a propagation garden to produce more of the rarer species and members germinate seeds in milk containers during winter for transplanting in spring.
Seeds collection calls for hundreds of hands and volunteer hours
The huge work of collecting seeds in the field is just the beginning, points out Leah Kleiman, Dane County Land Restoration Specialist. The seedheads are taken to a processing facility, where they are dried on fans-aerated racks. Then they are threshed to separate the seeds from their vegetative parts, and passed through a fanning mill and sieves until all that remains is pure seed. Volunteers assist in all of this work.
Every species is collected, cleaned, and sieved separately.
“We collected 3,100 pounds of seed this past year,” Kleiman reports, “and that’s just the pure seeds. That’s once it’s clean. That was from 169 species. This includes many kinds of grasses and many kinds of flowers. A majority of these are prairie species, because we are doing a lot of conversions from agriculture to prairie, but we also collect woodland and savanna species, because we’re always trying to improve those habitats as well.”
From these 169 species, 78 different seed mixes were formulated for different areas and habitats. Most of these are used for expanding and improving the county’s own prairies, but some of the precious material goes also to partner groups.
The seeds work is probably the most popular volunteer activity, Kleiman relates. “We had 52 seed collection volunteer work days just this fall,” she details. “So that means one to three of our staff at a time are running sometimes a seed collection day every single day of the week. Sometimes multiple teams are working on the same day. We also had 36 seed cleaning work days. So, there were two or three entire weeks where we spent every single day cleaning seed in our shed with our volunteers. And then they’re involved with the incredibly meticulous steps of having to weigh out all of those species as well.”
It is not uncommon, Kleiman notes, for an individual volunteer to have been involved in just about every step of the process from gathering seeds to preparing them for sowing onto the fields.
From farmland back to prairie
Last year, the collected seeds were allocated to more than 60 restoration and maintenance projects that Dane County has going. In many cases, these projects involve converting agricultural lands back to prairie. That conversion is a process that takes several years, as explained by Shane Otto, Dane County Botanist and Naturalist, who says the county currently owns about 3,000 acres of recently acquired cropland that it aims to convert over the next 10 years, starting in on about 300 acres each season.
The ambition is to recreate something close to what was here before being broken by the plow.
“Southern Wisconsin, as a broad term, at one point in time, was pretty much oak savanna, wetlands, and prairie ecosystem here,” Shane says. “We’re trying to restore the land we buy back into those native ecosystems. So, if they are farm fields, we convert them to prairie. If they are woodlands, we try to restore that land back to oak savanna or woodlands by removing a lot of the invasive species and so on.”
Briefly, the conversion to prairie begins while the land is still being farmed in row crops (typically corn and soybeans) to suppress weeds. Then, Shane relates, the precious native seed is sown in wintertime over snow using a rotary broadcaster pulled behind a tractor. The field will be mown the next couple years to control weeds.
“And if things go well, he continues, “then in the third year, we can conduct a prescribed burn. I call that a seed-release burn. This helps clear away vegetation, creating ideal conditions for the seedlings, plus some species need fire to be woken from dormancy. And then the prairie is hopefully off to the races, and all the critters, insects, mammals, birds can find their new home.”
The volunteers also get in on the prescribed burning, which occurs mostly in spring. “All of these lands and all of these ecosystems were developed or shaped with fire for many thousands of years, including by the Native Americans,” Lars Higdon explains. “So, we use fire to help maintain them now and for the future.”
Fire has multiple functions in these natural habitats, including to suppress invasive plant species and, in the case of oak savanna, to control aggressive yet weaker trees and woody plants so that the slow-growing but ultimately fire-resistant mighty oaks can come to dominate.
Education, organization, and communication are important
Leah Kleiman describes a typical volunteer work day during the seed collection season: “We ask everyone to arrive at a specific site, and let’s say there are 10 volunteers, and we’ll say, okay, these two species are ready. You 5 go collect that species, and you 5 go collect this species.” Leah, then, or maybe it will be Shane or Lars, will check with the individual gatherers, making sure seedheads from the right plant is going into their bags. The aim is to keep every species separate.
Education and training are important aspects of the volunteer effort. In addition to training on plant identification, Lars Higdon explains that volunteers are taught how to use certain tools and perform specific tasks. Some volunteers, he relates, even go through the county’s Certified Land Steward Program, which prepares them to take on responsibility for more complex ecological restoration work.
The Certified Land Stewards contribute about 10,000 hours of their time each year to the county’s parks and natural areas, relates Claire Lamberg, Land & Water Volunteer Coordinator, who uses an online volunteer management software to keep the volunteer activities moving smoothly. Altogether, she says, the volunteer hours total to between 50,000 and 65,000 annually. The technology, called Better Impact, is a cloud-based system used to register volunteers, schedule activities, inform volunteers about what activities are upcoming, facilitate signup, and manage communications among all those concerned.
A successful volunteer effort is not just about technology, of course. Claire emphasizes that relationships built through many years are crucial. For example, she points to relationships with teachers and county staff. “We have school groups that continually come out with us year after year after year, and some of those workdays have grown in ways that we never would have thought. Volunteering is very relationship based, no matter what it is. And the reasons why volunteers stay with an organization is because they have those relationships.”
The native species seeds also provide a basis for various kinds of community outreach. In addition to using the seeds within the park system, Lars explains, seeds are provided to, for example, schools or nonprofits that would like to establish pollinator gardens or to sow prairie on protected land. “A lot of these other groups don’t have access to seed that is affordable,” he says, “or they don’t have their own seed collection programs. So, a lot of times, they’ll come out and help us out in collecting the seed, and then we’ll give them back some seed for their own usage. It’s kind of prohibitively expensive for some of these groups to purchase on their own.”
For the past 9 years, the county has been running a growing program whereby volunteers grow the native plants and then make the live, potted plants available at no cost to schools and community groups. “Let’s say a school wants to do a pollinator garden,” notes Susan Sandford, the county’s Strategic Engagement Coordinator, “but they don’t have hundreds of dollars. We give them a pollinator garden that they put in and maintain. We’ve given away 43,000 plants since 2016 to 200 different groups.”
In addition, the county now works with public libraries, which make seed packets available to the general public. Volunteers helped last fall and winter to prepare 14,000 such packages. The friends groups also received seeds and potted plants for their own planting projects.
Cooperation with Operation Fresh Start is another aspect of community involvement. This is an employment training, mentoring, and education program for emerging adults. “We have three crews of Operation Fresh Start folks that work with us,” Shane Otto relates, “and they oftentimes are out there collecting seed shoulder-to-shoulder with us, as well. These are typically disenfranchised youth from the inner city that are working with us.”
Advice on starting a friends group
As examples in Dane County have shown, launching a friends or similar group can contribute hugely to local conservation efforts by leveraging the capabilities of public employees and building public support. It need not be terribly difficult to start and organize. Generally, there is something to organize around, such as a specific piece of habitat needing protection or a related issue.
Where there is well-intentioned leadership and a call to action, organizers may be pleasantly surprised the number of nature-loving, community-spirited people that will show themselves ready to contribute their time and energies.
For inspiration:
A few of Dane County’s friends groups
(click to visit each)
Dane County has been really fortunate to have support from many community groups, and Lars Higdon notes that if a new group is forming the county staff and other volunteers make a point to be “right there with them at the very beginning.”
“An important piece of advice that we give them, I think, is just to start out small and not overwhelm yourselves. Make small strides and achieve small victories and then build off of that,” he goes on. “I think all of our examples of successful volunteer efforts in parks started out with just volunteers chipping away at a little corner of a park or doing a little project and feeling good about themselves after making some progress and looking back on their work and seeing the results of their labor.”
Conservation work takes a lot of time, labor, and patience, and rebuilding a piece of habitat does not happen overnight.
“Also, “Lars notes, “it’s like Claire said earlier, the successful groups recognize how important it is to build good relationships with each other, with staff, with other partners. It’s really, really critical that the people component of the work occurs so that people are forming bonds with each other, having fun with each other, developing positive experiences with each other.
“It’s not all about work all the time. It’s about sharing lunch with each other, a great time, talking about your passions out in the parks and what you’re interested in and connecting with other people. And that’s what carries the projects forward into the future – it is that connecting with others and creating those relationships.”
Over at Pheasant Branch, Susan Gruber can attest to the importance of community and comradery. She says the volunteers in their Friends group see their work in the prairie as a way to give back to the piece of nature where they enjoy spending time, but it also can be something much deeper and broader than that.
“For me, not only do I need to have my hands dirty and to work out in the conservancy or in a food pantry garden, et cetera, but it really is a spiritual practice for me,” Gruber explains. “I feel like we were given this Earth and we need to take care of it and not abuse it. And it’s meditation for me. It’s a time for renewal. I love to see the different seasons and to experience them. And there is no better way to do that.
“Plus, it builds community. I’d bet most of the group of about 12 people that I work with have been out there several times each season for probably four or five years now. So, it’s a real committed, friendly group of people that care about each other. I mean, we know about each other’s lives. So, it becomes a support group as well.”
Build your own little piece of native
Restoring prairie by the tens, hundreds, or thousands of acres is wonderful, of course, but creating habitat even on a much smaller scale also can be gratifying. For the native plant and prairie enthusiasts working in their backyards or on private land, Leah Kleiman says, there likely are places nearby where individuals or families can collect seed on their own. There are a few caveats. First is to know the law, what is permitted and not permitted. A second is make sure not to collect on private land unless one has permission from the landowner.
“If you’re collecting on public land, that’s allowed in many cases,” she says, “but you need to be aware of what species are protected and what areas are protected and so you’re not just going and taking whatever. And then, people need to be familiar with their plants. So, if you aren’t someone who has good plant ID, you probably shouldn’t be going out and collecting your own seeds because you could be getting invasive species or not understanding that what you’re collecting isn’t going to do well wherever you’re going to plant it.
“You need to understand what is rare and what is acceptable to collect. You don’t want to take from a really threatened population and over-collect and over-harvest. So, it’s important to be aware of that kind of thing.”
There is usually somebody knowledgeable and interested nearby who is more than willing to help, notes Susan Sandford, who remarks that “10 years ago, I didn’t really know anything about native plants, and now, I’m growing 150 species.” There is growing interest in native plants, she says, and there are native plant societies in many cities and communities. Sometimes they organize native flower walks and organize seed exchanges.
Existing on every continent except Antarctica, grasslands come in diverse types and go by many names. What all have in common is that they are under human pressure, and, in many places today, only ongoing human intervention can assure their preservation. The opportunities to learn, support, advocate, and volunteer are many – in Dane County and around the world.