Several months ago, Tom Westhoff helped start a project that allowed Montgomery County High School students restore land back into a prairie in an area that is near the high school campus.

On July 7, the Montgomery County resident led an event that allowed other county residents to learn about the property as well as identification, establishment and management of the prairie. It was called the Wildflower Walk, which lasted about an hour at the fitness trail. There was a 10-minute delay before the walk began due to rain.
Westhoff started the walk by telling the participants that the area was historically native prairie.

“When I became an agent in 1980, there was a report from 1938 in the files,” Westhoff said. “The very first agent was assigned to Montgomery, Warren and St. Charles counties. One of his first duties was to estimate wildlife populations in the county. After reading that, there are six or seven deer in Montgomery County. But he said there were thousands of prairie chickens. The biggest concentration was north of New Florence, which puts us right in this area.”

During the walk, Westhoff showed plants such as mountain mint, gray headed coneflower, white indigo, rattlesnake master, bee balm, Illinois bundleflower, pale purple coneflower and prairie blazing star.

Westhoff, who worked as a conservation agent for 20 years, said plans are being made for some plants in the area to be burned in the future.

“When you have just wildflowers and not much grass, there’s not a lot of fuel,” Westhoff said. “The high school has a conservation class and I get them to come out and help burn so they would know a little bit about it. You have to burn it at least every three years at a minimum to keep the woody stuff down because the woody stuff is going to start coming in. A little over a year ago, we hired a guy to come in and knock down all of the woody stuff. We’ll try to burn it again as much as we can for the next several years to make sure that woody stuff doesn’t exist.”

Westhoff said more species will be added to the area within the next couple of years.

“We have about 25 out there now,” Westhoff said. “I like to get 50 or more.”
Also, there are new signs that were built in the area. One is for the Beth Winter Prairie Trail, which is named after a Montgomery County resident, and the other is for the Montgomery County R-II fitness trail.