From Invasive Plants to Native Seeds: Restoring JBLM’s Prairie Oak Preserve
More than 20 volunteers joined the latest event, which focused on planting native camas and chocolate lily seeds using handmade seed balls. With soil, compost, sand, and water, volunteers shaped hundreds of small seed-filled spheres and worked across the preserve to place them in areas cleared for planting. Others removed moss and dense grass to expose pockets of bare soil, ensuring the seeds could contact the ground and have the best chance to take root. Additional volunteers continued removing Scotch broom, adding to years of steady progress.
The transformation of Prairie Oak Preserve has not happened overnight. When restoration work first began — records show events dating back almost ten years — Scotch broom grew so thick that the area was difficult to walk through, let alone enjoy as a natural open space. Through repeated volunteer events and sustained community interest, the invasive plants have been pushed back enough for native species to reappear. The return of chocolate lilies was an early sign that the land was ready to support more restoration, inspiring the move toward active replanting.
“The Prairie Oak Preserve has always been a place for community engagement and education. Having so many children and families involved in reseeding rare plants there is the fulfillment of a vision 20 years in the making,” said Dennis Buckingham, JBLM wildlife biologist.
Although Prairie Oak Preserve is small, it represents a much larger ecological story across JBLM. The installation contains some of the last remaining stretches of glacial outwash prairie in the region. Only about 5% of this prairie habitat remains from what once existed, and JBLM protects roughly 95% of what is left. These prairies, along with associated Garry oak woodlands, Ponderosa pine savannahs, and wetlands, support diverse wildlife and embody an irreplaceable part of the South Puget Sound landscape.
Events like this one show how community members play a vital role in preserving that heritage. Restoring a prairie takes patience, invasive removal, soil preparation, and seed collection, and replanting must happen year after year. But each volunteer effort adds up. For volunteers at the Prairie Oak Preserve, that work became something they could hold in their hands, a small ball of soil and native seeds with the potential to grow into the future prairie landscape of JBLM.
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