If you want to photograph swallowtail butterflies that look like they flew out of the stained glass at Chartres, or set up an easel and paint lotus blossoms blooming as big as a head of lettuce…you’ll need an appointment.
The Prairie Garden Trust isn’t the typical nature reserve. It’s lovingly and actively tended not-for-profit 540-acre sanctuary that’s free and open to the public—as long as director Lorna Domke knows you’re coming. Hours are flexible; photographers, she knows, like to catch the last soft glow of a sunset, and birdwatchers show up at the first crack of light in the night sky, eager to see 25 different kinds of warbler or one of the bobwhite quail that used to be common in the suburbs but have lost their habitat.
Discover your next outdoor adventure
Subscribe to the St. Louis Outdoors newsletter to get smarter about hiking, biking, paddling, climbing, and camping within the St. Louis region and beyond.
This place is all about habitat.
In 1971, after Henry Domke graduated from John Burroughs School, his parents bought 80 acres between Fulton and Jefferson City. His dad, Herb Domke, had grown up in the Flint Hills of Kansas, a rolling, wide open landscape that was a sea of saturated green in spring, gold in fall, a purple haze in the distance. Missouri’s prairies had been just as beautiful, and they’d once covered a third of the state. But the world’s prairies were disappearing fast.
The Domkes decided to take their new land’s pasture back to prairie.
First, they’d have to get rid of the fescue, a tough exotic grass with the death-grip of a broke con man. They tried plowing, discing, and burning before they finally resorted to glyphosate. When the ground was clear, they began planting—Missouri natives only, hundreds of different species. Dogwood and redbud trees, phlox, coneflowers, asters, butterfly weed, Virginia bluebells, frutillaria, blazing star, American lotus in the ponds…
Soon the prairie garden was spiky with indigenous grasses, flowers flicked among them like bright paint spatter. Henry and Lorna took the reins from Henry’s parents, buying adjacent property until they reached 540 acres. It was time to make the prairie garden a sanctuary open to the public. Lorna figured out how to file for not-for-profit status, and Henry summed up their simple concept: “We’re not about research or education or weddings. We just want people to enjoy the beauty of nature.”
Peter Raven, legendary director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, came to explore, collected plants for the Garden, and became a staunch friend. In 2012, Henry hired a landscape architect to do a master plan, tidying what was now a lush landscape and creating more graceful edges between fields and woods. The architect suggested half a mile of paved sidewalk edged in wildflowers; and she helped configure the garden for wayfinding. Now there are signs, restrooms, mown hiking trails, enhanced overlooks, a visitor’s center.
Two-thirds of the Prairie Garden Trust isn’t prairie at all, but forest, some of it dense, some of it wide open savannah. There are glades, swamps, creeks, limestone bluffs covered in moss. Some areas look like the Ozarks, others like the flat northern prairie. The diversity makes the place ideal for butterfly walks, wildflower walks, and birding walks.
“I was just out with a French ecologist,” Henry says, “and he told me 164 different kinds of birds have been identified here. I keep a list on eBird, but I didn’t even know the total was that high!”
There are tons of monarch butterflies, though for sheer spectacle, Henry’s partial to the swallowtails.
In summer, he spends hours photographing the American lotus; in fall, the New England aster (which is, despite its name, a Missouri native); in spring, the various dogwoods.
Luckily—or maybe inevitably—Henry Domke is an acclaimed nature photographer. He sells his serene images, many of them photographed at the Prairie Garden, to medical centers across the country, and the revenue keeps the trust going.
The Prairie Garden Trust is open to the public (by appointment only) seven days a week, April 1 through October 31. You can bring kids, a plein-air easel, or a picnic, but your dog has to stay home. So does your horse. So does your bike.
