This poem was written about the house I designed with my husband, Chuck Armstrong. After the poem, I share some facts about this beloved home!
SONG OF PRAIRIE SUN
by Patricia K. Armstrong
Here am I
Here am I in northern Illinois
On the limestone soil am I
In the tall grass prairie am I
Under the bur oak tree am I
Big blue stem and Indian grass
Compass plant and coneflower
Grasshopper and garter snake
Song sparrow and meadow vole
Beside me, my friends
Above me, the sky
Around me, the wind and rain
the sun and snow
Here am I
Here am I a part of the all
The land and the waters
The plants and the creatures
The Great Spirit and I
Hands joined, we stand here together
Hearts joined, we sing here together
Happy are we
Happy are we to live here together
Beautiful are we
Beautiful are we to live here together
Beautiful
It is all together beautiful
It is all together
It is all together
as it should be
We are whole
We are one
In 2004 our 21-year-old house needed a new roof. The original cedar shakes were warped and cracked and needed replacing. We decided to make a green roof covered with mostly native plants on the 500 square-foot roof on the garage facing east and the 1000 square-foot main roof facing south. The rest of the roof would be covered with interlocking, aluminum shingles (from InterLock) made from recycled beverage cans. On the flat roof above the dormer, we would install solar panels and be the first grid-tied solar electric house in Naperville. We hired Kenny Gallt of Foliage Design Systems to engineer the green roofs and co-ordinate and connect them to the aluminum shingled roofs. For the solar panels we hired Ted Lowe of Creative Energy, and he and two helpers plus Chuck and I installed them ourselves the summer of 2004.
Foliage Design Systems began building the green roofs in October of 2004. They used seven different layers to protect the roof from water and plant roots, and to help the rain drain off the roof. They divided the roofs up into sections with 2 X 4s to help hold the soil in place on the 30-degree slope. After the special mix of mostly small gravel and very little soil was in place, they covered it with a straw mat for the winter. I spent the fall and winter picking the plants for the roof, designing where and how they would be
planted, and ordering them from ten different nurseries from Nebraska to New England (most from around the Great Lakes). I ended up with 3000 individual plants of 75 to 86 different species. They ranged in size from wee seedlings to large dormant roots, but most were, 2- to 4- inch plugs.
Plants began arriving in April and May of 2005, and it took three days to gather all the plants along the back fence, another 4 days to sort them and put them together into the proper groups for planting. The east-facing garage roof needed 22 sections each with 9 to 48 plants depending upon the size of the section, while the south-facing main roof required 26 sections with 28 to 84 plants each. It took Kenny Gallt four full days to plant them all according to my plan. By June 12 the rest of the back-orders arrived so Kenny had one more day to plant all of them. We had to water everything every day through the summer heat. About 90% of the species survived the first winter, and in 2006 Kenny Gallt entered our roofs into the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association’s Excellence in Landscaping Awards Contest. We won a SILVER AWARD! and I wrote about my green roofs in several botanical publications.
Prairie Sun Home FIRSTS:
1983: ONE OF THE FIRST SUPERN WELL INSULATED, ENERGY EFFICIENT, PASSIVE SOLAR HOMES IN NAPERVILLE.
1983: PROBABLY THE FIRST HOME IN NAPERVILLE LANDSCAPED WITH ALMOST 100% NATIVE PLANTS (OVER 300 SPECIES) AND NO LAWN.
2004: NEW ROOF OF ALUMINUM SHINGLES MADE FROM RECYCLED BEVERAGE CANS.
2004: THE FIRST GRID-TIED SOLAR ELECTRIC HOME IN NAPERVILLE.
2005: PROBABLY THE ONLY HOME IN NAPERVILLE WITH A GREEN ROOF (1500 SQUARE FEET) AND MAYBE THE ONLY GREEN ROOF ANYWHERE BUILT ON A STEEP SLOPE (30%) WITH ONLY 4 INCHES OF SOIL. WE PLANTED 3000 PLANTS OF 86 DIFFERENT SPECIES, 90 % OF WHICH WERE NATIVE.
Prairie Sun Home Facts
PURCHASE DATE:
March 1983
VEGETATION COVER WHEN PURCHASED:
ONE NATIVE PLANT, Quercus macrocarpa, BUR OAK, lot covered with Agropyron repens, QUACK GRASS, and Bromus inermis, SMOOTH BROME
ORIGINAL VEGETATION:
Surveyed 1840, covered with corn. Original vegetation had been prairie. Bur oak grove to the east, small creek running southwest to empty into West Branch of DuPage River
CONSTRUCTION:
We designed and built our passive solar home called Prairie Sun.
We protected the bur oak with a fence and wood chips. We used a small bobcat for
excavating and disturbed the soil as little as possible.
PLANT COLLECTING:
We bought 20 pounds of prairie grass seed from LaFayette Home Nursery. We collected prairie forb seed from all over northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. We had three gunny sacks of prairie seed arranged into 3 types:
(1) Lawn Grass Mix--Buchloe dactyloides, BUFFALO GRASS, Bouteloua
gracilis, BLUE GRAMA, and Bouteloua curtipendula, SIDE OATS GRAMA
(2) Mid Prairie Mix--7-8 different mid-size grasses plus scores of flowers
(3) Tall Prairie Mix--5 different grasses plus scores of prairie flowers
We bought a semi-trailer load of wood chips and several tons of limestone flagstone.
We grew 5 flats of prairie plants to transplant into the prairie: Sporobolus heterolepis,
PRAIRIE DROPSEED, and Echinacea pallida, PALE PURPLE CONEFLOWER to set out along the driveway and main prairie path; Aster oblongifolia, AROMATIC ASTER, to plant along the limestone walls and edge of house; Silphium laciniatum, COMPASS PLANT, and Silphium terebinthinaceum, PRAIRIE DOCK, to scatter through the tall prairie mix area.
We grew 3 acorns of Quercus muhlenbergii, CHINQUEPIN OAK, which were transplanted
into the prairie in October of 1983 at 9, 10, and 11 ft. of height.
We bought native trees and shrubs from: King Nursery, Morton Arboretum, Possibility
Place Nursery, and the Illinois Department of Conservation. More than half of these were bare-root stock; the others were transplants. These were planted around the bur oak in front to create a woodland wildflower garden, and in several places around the house and back yard to create an evergreen windbreak and shrub thickets for the birds.
We transplanted some woodland wildflowers and small trees from other properties in
Naperville, Southern Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. We collected seed of woodland wildflowers and mushed them into the woodchips under the bur oak.
MOVING IN:
We moved into the house in September of 1983.
PLANTING:
On 1 October 1983, we hired a farmer to plow up the whole lot except for the wood-chipped area around the bur oak tree in front. Limestone pathways were laid out on the ground. Three gunny sacks of prairie seed were then hand broadcasted in the three different areas (three different mixes) and raked and stomped into the ground. 5 flats of prairie plants and 3 oak seedlings were transplanted and mulched. Trees
and shrubs were transplanted and mulched with wood chips.
MANAGEMENT:
FIRST YEAR 1984: Queen Anne's lace and red clover came up all over, everywhere. We mowed it off two or three times during the growing season. I marked all prairie seedlings I found with stakes and hand weeded around them.
SECOND YEAR 1985: Covered with plastic one bad area and reseeded and transplanted plants into it. Continued to mark prairie seedlings and hand weed around them. There was much less Queen Anne's lace and red clover the second year.
THIRD YEAR 1986: We conducted the first prairie burn in March and did a little hand weeding, but not much. Almost all the weeds had disappeared.
MANAGEMENT SINCE 1986 consists of only three days of work per year:
(1) Each year in March we rake the firebreaks, set the back fire, and then burn the whole
prairie, afterward we scatter and scratch seeds into the bare soil (see photo below!)
(2) Each year in July or August, we cut down all the woody plant sprouts coming up in the
prairie: Cornus racemosa, GRAY DOGWOOD, Rhus glabra, SMOOTH SUMAC, Populus
tremuloides, QUAKING ASPEN (removed in 2007), and Prunus americana, WILD PLUM.
(3) Occasional weeding is done from time to time. Kentucky blue grass, dandelions, and
black medic come in along the edges.
CURRENT SPECIES COUNT:
331 native plant species with 1000s of individuals, including:
2011 32 different kinds of trees
28 different kinds of shrubs Mean C = 5.9
33 different kinds of grasses and sedges FQI = 107.0
145 different kinds of prairie forbs (wildflowers)
85 different kinds of woodland wildflowers
10 different kinds of ferns
112 different bird species with 19 different nesting species (53 species in 2011)
17 mammals, 5 reptiles, 4 amphibians
Over 100 different insects and spiders that we have been able to figure out, including:
10 different kinds of damselflies and dragonflies
10 different kinds of grasshoppers, katydids and crickets
13 different kinds of bees and bee-like flies
14 different kinds of moths
18 different kinds of butterflies
12 different kinds of beetles
BLOOM SEASON:
Begins March 1st with hazelnut
Ends November 15 th – December 1st with witch hazel and aromatic aster
Peak bloom times are everyday between May 15th and September 1st with an average of 50 - 80 species in bloom every day.
Learn more about Prairie Sun in the following documents:
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