Marika from Living Prairie Museum
Download MP3We know our services and programs impact you, so let's talk about them. Together, we'll learn from the people behind the scenes and get to know our city a little better. From the City of Winnipeg, this is Our City, Our Podcast.
Natalie:This podcast is recorded in Treaty 1 territory, the home and traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Ininew, and Dakota peoples, and the national homeland of the Red River Metis. We acknowledge that our drinking water comes from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation in Treaty 3 territory.
Tamara:Hi, thanks for joining us. I'm Tamara. And I'm Natalie. Natalie, we're shaking off some of the winter with this one.
Natalie:Woo. You know, it might feel a little bit far off, but in the coming weeks, that snow, it's gonna melt. Some avid gardeners actually already might be starting to plan. You know, maybe there's a few seedlings sitting on a windowsill somewhere.
Tamara:Oh, it sounds so nice. And already teeming with life is the nursery at the Living Prairie Museum. We're joined today by their curator, Marika Olenic, who's here to tell us about a milestone year at the museum and why the prairie landscape is something completely different than an overgrown lawn.
Natalie:So let's take a little trip to Northwest Winnipeg. We're gonna head west down Ness Avenue. Maybe you're in a car. Maybe you're you're looking out of the window of the d 15 bus. And to one side, you see a church.
Natalie:But look north and for a short moment the buildings drop away. Marika, for those who don't know or maybe haven't been, what is the Living Prairie Museum?
Marika:Yeah, Living Prairie Museum is a really cool spot. It is a nature preserve that protects endangered tall grass prairies. So that's the habitat that most of Southeastern Manitoba was, kind of pre colonial times. And that preserve is a city of Winnipeg Nature Park. Anybody can come and visit, but also we have an interpretive center and picnic area and stuff like that.
Marika:So it's an opportunity where people can come and take part in programs and learn about the prairie or just go for a walk or a visit if they want on their own.
Tamara:And was there a moment that you remember where you got just hooked with the prairie and the landscape here that led you to this?
Marika:Looking back on it, I didn't know it at the time, but I grew up in the country in Saskatchewan and we had tallgrass prairies. So one of my early memories, for example, is my parents taking us out in the early spring to look for the crocuses on the hills by our house. And lo and behold, now I know as a grown up, crocuses don't just grow anywhere. Right? They need that prairie.
Marika:So I kinda grew up in that landscape without realizing it. And then when I got older, I started working in an environmental field and then got to go out as a field assistant on some research and, yeah, just really got to love the prairie even more.
Natalie:So I'm so excited today because we are talking about something so directly important to Winnipeg's core. And, you know, it's a theme that's come up a lot on the podcast. When we talk to Brett at cemeteries or or Martha in forestry, we've started with the reflections of these big open landscapes, so different from what we know now. Actually, Prairie can often be described as empty land. And and why is that so easy?
Natalie:Why is it so easy to overlook?
Marika:Well, I think Prairie is easier to get to know if you're a little more up close and personal with it. It's not, you know, soaring Rocky Mountains or something like that that you can see from a distance. But I also think that's that's a bit of a legacy left over from colonization and settlement, right? Like three out of my four grandparents grew up on farms in the Prairies and that was seen as land that didn't have value until you farmed it. This is really different than, you know, how most indigenous communities on The Prairie East would have viewed the land.
Marika:And so I think there's a bit of a hangover from that as well where we see Prairie as an opportunity to do something different with it instead of getting to know it and understand what it it does for us and how we can interact with it.
Tamara:Now we're actually really lucky here because somebody or a group of people had the foresight to protect where the Living Prairie Museum is now before development happened. What did that early decision mean and why did it matter so much?
Marika:Yeah, I think it was a really amazing amount of foresight. It actually happened back before Unicity in Winnipeg, so it was the city of St. James at the time. And it was in an era, right, where the city was growing and they were looking at a new subdivision out on Ness Avenue. At But the same time, there was a biological survey that happened and some biologists who kind of knew what they were looking for realized, you know, and the neighborhood knew obviously, but they sort of confirmed this is native prairie.
Marika:It was an area that had never been plowed, it hadn't been used for the most part for other land uses that would, you know, get rid of the prairie. And so they actually lobbied the city council at the time and passed by a single vote to set it aside. So it wasn't torn up when they built the new houses in the neighborhood. Instead, they decided to set it aside and then not too long after that it got designated as a city of Winnipeg Park after Unicity. So but that's that's a legacy.
Marika:Right? Everybody who lives in that neighborhood today can enjoy it. Everyone who lives in Winnipeg today and even visitors can come and enjoy that spot. And it's it's the largest and best prairie we have left in Winnipeg. Everything else is way smaller by comparison and often not in the same condition.
Marika:So we've inherited that. And it's our job, we see that at Living Prairie Museum, is to take care of that place so that it'll carry forward. We're looking back at what, you know, people before us had, but we're also looking forward at making sure we take care of it for people in the future.
Natalie:And you've shared this before, you know, what gets lost when land is disturbed? Can you can you ever get yourself back to
Marika:a prairie? Yeah. Like, conservation of prairie is really important because it's so hard to replace a prairie. We we do do restoration. The City of Winnipeg Naturalist Services does restoration projects within the city.
Marika:And and that's really important. But a high quality restoration might be, say, 40 species of plants, for example. We have a 160 ish that we know about on the Living Prairie Park. So just a small area, incredibly diverse. It's so hard to get back.
Marika:And a restoration takes a ton of time, a lot of energy, a lot of money. So as much as we can, conserving these places is easier to do than to try and bring them back once they've been lost.
Tamara:And if somebody thinks that prairies are just grass, what are they missing?
Marika:Oh, mean, well they are grass. They're a grassland. But there's so much more, right? Like if we're talking about plants, there's all the wildflowers and and there's edible plants and there's medicinal plants. And so there's plants that we have cultural values with.
Marika:But of course, there's all the things that go along with plants. There's wildlife. There's insects. There's pollinators. We have a great habitat, for example, for monarch butterflies at Living Prairie Museum because we have all the things that they need for their part of the life cycle here in Manitoba.
Marika:There's the soil healthy healthy soils. There's every little living things in the soil that we never see going on, right? There's all these different things. And of course there's other values for us. Prairie lands, not as much as wetlands, but more than, you know, concrete or lawns are going to protect us from flooding.
Marika:They help store carbon in their huge massive roots under the ground, right? They provide all these services for us, even if we're not thinking about it.
Natalie:And this might go a long way to help our colleagues over in Bylaw Enforcement. Can you tell us the difference between turning your lawn into a native prairie habitat versus just abandoning your yard work?
Marika:Yeah. So most of our lawns are made up of grasses that are not native to North America. Kentucky bluegrass and brome grass and quack grass are all imports from Europe and Asia. And they grow well here, but they're not native grasses. And the way they grow tends to crowd out other plants.
Marika:A few things can hold on with these plants, but they grow in this way that is really low diversity. So if you just don't mow your lawn for a long time, you're not going to suddenly have a bunch of native prairie plants springing up. They can't compete with these introduced lawn grasses, for example. Instead, what you'll usually get are other European species like dandelions or thistle or things like that, which are fairly invasive in some cases. And so although we appreciate that people are trying to do that and and sometimes you can, you know, keep that grass under control and plant other things amongst it.
Marika:But prairie takes a bit of work, right? Like we're just saying restoration of prairie isn't just a matter of not letting it grow because it's not the same plants, it's not the same ecosystem. You won't get that same diversity.
Tamara:Let's pause for a second and just talk about some plants that maybe some folks might think are native to Winnipeg or are pretty and we're just gonna leave them be. I'm thinking creeping bellflower. Is it a native prairie plant?
Marika:No. So that one's another one that came over from Europe. It's perennial, so it'll grow back year after year. And I have it in my yard, so I'm very familiar with it. And it's tricky.
Marika:It's not good. No. Like a lot of perennial weeds, it will start to crowd things out. It's hard to get rid of. If you can dig out the roots, that's often a really good idea.
Marika:But if don't want to be disturbing the soil or it's growing amongst plants that you don't want to dig up, the best option usually that people have success with, it's going to take a few years even is to just pick and pull it back as much as you possibly can over and over and over again. That reduces the strength of the root system. It eventually won't have as much juice to keep re shooting itself, but you're almost never going to keep totally get rid of it. And that's the nature of a lot of the perennial weeds unfortunately. Thistle is a lot the same way like if you have Canada thistle, it'll just keep popping up.
Marika:But if you manage to just keep hitting it over and over again, usually you slow slowly start to break down that underground root system so it can't keep shooting up as often. Living Prairie Museum is actually a good example for that. We don't have creeping bellflower, but we used to have really large patches of thistle in certain areas and years and years of summer students pulling it out has made a big difference. Like, when I first worked there eight years ago, there was way more than there is now, for example. The joy of invasive species is you aren't probably ever going to get rid of them.
Marika:So it's more of a, like, getting them to a manageable point a lot of the time.
Natalie:If you wanted to dabble in some some native species, are are there a few that you would suggest for folks?
Marika:Oh, yeah. Definitely. There's there's quite a few that are actually quite easy to grow. The joy of native prairie plants is that they want to grow here. They once they're established, they don't really need watering.
Marika:Like kind
Tamara:of plant.
Marika:Yeah. Yeah. They're perennial for the most part. Some of them are shorter lived than others, but some will live up decades even. So you're still gonna have to weed because you're not gonna get rid of your weeds.
Marika:But some easy ones that are a lot of people like to start with are things like black eyed Susans, which are these cheery little yellow flowers that grow fairly quickly and easily. If you like grasses, there's a number of grasses like big bluestem, which is our provincial grass that's reasonably easy to grow in most locations around Winnipeg.
Tamara:I did not know we had a provincial grass.
Marika:Yeah. Isn't that cool? Very cool. That's the big that's one of our tallest grasses. So it's like also very showy.
Marika:A lot of people we give away at our Monarch Butterfly Festival most summers, we give away swamp milkweed, which is also a host for monarch butterflies and a big tall dark pink flower is pretty showy milkweed plant that also isn't crowding out the way some of the other milkweeds are. So that's an easy one that grows in most places in Winnipeg as well.
Tamara:The Living Prairie Museum is one place, but you and the museum, the impact is far reaching. So where can people see your work around Winnipeg?
Marika:Yeah. So one of the things that I can't take credit for, but people who've worked there long before me have started doing over the years, is we do native prairie seed plots. So we've gone out over the years and gathered the seed in small amounts from different places where these native prairie flowers and grasses grow, and then we grow them out in larger quantities. And so we can grow and harvest lots of seed. We've got a ton of wonderful volunteers that also help with this process in the last few years.
Marika:And then that can go into restoration. It's actually really hard to get native prairie seeds in a high diversity, especially wildflowers, and it can be very expensive. And so the work that we've done to take little bits of seed from our prairie and other little prairies around the city then go into these restoration projects that we're talking about. It can create these higher diversity plantings all around the city. So whether it's along Wellington Crescent or longer ago, there was a large one up along the Gateway Trail or all kinds of different places through the city.
Marika:Our seeds are going and helping plant new prairies around the city.
Tamara:Retention ponds, are you also involved
Marika:in Definitely retention ponds. Yep. Most of the newer retention ponds are gonna have these native prairie plantings and, yeah, some of the seed from our work and from our prairie goes into that.
Natalie:Now to go back to the museum, one thing that maybe might surprise people is that prairie actually needs people Yes. To survive. You you've put this well. Can you explain that relationship?
Marika:Yeah. The Tallgrass Prairie, which is where we are, is a little different than when you go further west. Tallgrass Prairie exists sort of in this tension between forest and prairie. And if there's not what we call disturbance, the forest tends to grow into the prairie or you get a shrub land and lots of bushes. And that'll crowd out all these prairie species, it totally changes the ecosystem.
Marika:Disturbances like grazing and fire have always kind of kept the prairie as more of an open grassland. And fire has always as far as we can tell been lit at least sometimes by lightning, but a lot of times by indigenous peoples. So indigenous peoples of the prairie including Nehiyawe, Anishinaabe, Dakota, others who have lived on the prairies have used fires a way of creating habitat for animals, of encouraging certain plants to grow, and of course of keeping the grasslands more open by burning back trees and shrubs. So that's something that's always happened on the prairie and it's important to take care of the land that way. It allows new plants to grow, it gets rid of the duff layer, all these kind of things.
Marika:So we do that on Living Prairie Museum, as well as some other prairies, including restored prairies around Winnipeg. The Naturalist Services branch will do, you know, weather dependent, a number of small, very carefully controlled and planned fires, and it helps rejuvenate the land. So on Living Prairie Museum, we kind of have a rotation about every five years a little patch of our prairie will get burnt. We can't do the whole thing because it doesn't leave anywhere for, you know, animals to go and stuff like that, but we move it around to take care of it. When we're talking about things like fire or grazing on the land, this this is kind of the idea that like taking care of the prairie really matters.
Marika:And it's a every every ecosystem needs people to take care of it. We often, especially in like sort of Western science kind of ideas, and we talk about this a lot, that we'll think about nature's over in one corner and people are in the other and then they're separate things somehow. But all habitats have always been taken care of by indigenous peoples. The land like the prairie has always been taken care of by people and so we want people to understand that it's our job to take care of the land that stewardship really matters. And especially on the prairie if we don't do that, everything starts to suffer.
Marika:You see this loss of diversity and that habitat really changes. So we also just want people to understand that taking care of the land is part of our job and that it's really important especially with an endangered habitat like Tallgrass Prairie that we do these things.
Tamara:You also mentioned grazing and you have a couple of visitors that have been popping by for a few years now that are just so adorable.
Marika:Can we talk about the sheep? Yes. So Thank you. Because we're an urban prairie, we're right in the middle of the city. Having traditional grazing animals like bison wouldn't be a great option for us.
Marika:Also, there's not enough food for them. But we still want to bring those benefits of the disturbance that grazing brings onto the land. Animals eat and poop and move seeds around and do all kinds of things that's good for the land. And so we bring sheep every year and it gets people very excited. So usually in the early summer in June sometime we'll get a little herd of sheep, about 25 animals that come and do their job, right?
Marika:They're also our habitat managers. So they're eating, they sometimes help us with controlling invasive weeds, they're doing all the things like similar to what buffalo or bison might do on the land. And of course, yes, people love to see them. Although they are, you know, not pet animals. They're doing their job.
Marika:Are working.
Natalie:Yep. Good lesson, I suppose, for for the thousands of kids who who also come and visit you every year. Yep. I would love to hear in your eyes, what are the kids noticing that the adults often miss?
Marika:Oh, boy. Like, everything. Kids kids are often looking down and so they're seeing bugs. The kids spot the bugs before I do, which is wonderful. So when when we do our education programs, a lot of school trips come.
Marika:So we take them out always as, you know, a block or some other activity out on the prairie as part of their program. So they're often spotting things that we're not spotting. They're asking questions that adults don't ask, right? Well, you know, kids are learning, you know, how seeds work. They're learning how plants grow in in a way that adults kind of take for granted.
Marika:So we're talking about these little details of things with them that adults aren't always paying attention to. So that's probably the most fun. And they also just, you know, they like to be outside. You see a huge difference as soon as we take kids from inside the building where they maybe have to listen to us. As soon as they're outside and the teachers will say, oh, you know, sometimes these kids are really rangy and they're out on the prairie and no, there's no problems.
Marika:They have a wonderful time and it's it's it's a delight every single time.
Natalie:Do you have, like, a favorite first moment that you've witnessed with new visitors?
Marika:There's been a few times where we've had kids come with their schools, but they're kids who are fairly recent immigrants from Ukraine. And more than once, I remember one little boy, like, we're showing them some of the little prairie birds, savannah sparrows out there, and he said, oh, it's like at home. Like, he it's probably not the exact same bird, but it looked like, you know, landscapes he was familiar with, plants and animals he was familiar with, and that was just really nice to see that people can connect with the things that they know when they come here. A little bit of comfort too, I'm sure. Definitely.
Marika:Yeah. And I remember one time some women as well were talking about the plants from India that they were familiar with that were related to milkweed, for example, and we were sharing the names for them and stuff like that.
Tamara:For people who haven't been, why is the Living Prairie Museum such a unique asset for us here in Winnipeg? We're really lucky to have it.
Marika:Yeah. So Tallgrass Prairie in Manitoba, there is actually less than one percent left of the original habitat. There's very little left and what does exist tends to be very small patches. Living Prairie Museum is really unique. It's one of the only places one of the only ones I can think of that is actually in a city.
Marika:It's accessible. Like, I ride the bus there pretty often or you can take your car, but it's right there. So it's a really easy place for people to come and visit this habitat that you're not going to get to see anywhere else. And we offer people a lot of choices when they come. You can come and go for a walk and do whatever you want on your own.
Marika:We've got self guided trails if you want to learn something. But we're lucky because the interpretive center often allows us to offer programming and a chance for people to learn or interact with the nature interpreters. So you can come, it's free to visit. We're open on Saturdays in the winter and then more in the summer. But we offer programs like guided walks and hands on displays in our interpretive center and sometimes other things like workshops and talks and events like that.
Marika:So it's a chance for people to learn and get up close and personal with the habitat, but also have some interpretation or some guides if that's something that they're looking for.
Natalie:And this year marks a major anniversary for the museum. What do people need to know? Why is right now a great time to visit?
Marika:Yeah, we're fiftieth anniversary this year for the Congratulations. Yeah, it's really exciting. We are going to be having some fiftieth anniversary events. We're looking at a big community festival in the summer and some other events coming up. And we just want people to celebrate.
Marika:There's been so many people who have volunteered or spent time there or gone on their school field trips or whatever over the years, and we're gonna invite everybody to come in and share with us, especially this summer.
Tamara:For someone listening who wants to support the prairie landscape but really doesn't know where to start, what's a simple step they can take?
Marika:Yeah. I mean, come to the prairie. Don't have to talk to us if you don't want to, but coming and just getting to know the place is really important. We like to talk about it, about how much it changes. Right?
Marika:If you come every two weeks, you'll see something completely different each time you come. And because it is, you just there all the time, anytime people want to go for a walk, you're welcome to do that anytime. We also, like I said, host a number of different events and so people can look up that on our website, they can check things out to see if they want to get more involved that way. We offer things like we have a bookstore as well as seed sales from the seeds that we grow, so people can if they're interested in doing their own sort of prairie plantings or things like that, we can help people get started in that. And actually in the springtime we have our prairie planting workshop series that people can join.
Marika:And yeah, then there's other opportunities too, right? If people want to get way more involved, there's volunteering, we have people help us every year with things like seed harvesting and seed cleaning. We are really lucky also to have a Friends organization, which is a nonprofit that helps support our work, people so can also get more involved with that. You know, we'll send
Natalie:people on their way away from the prairie landscape. But if there was one thing that you really hope people carry with them after visiting or listening to this conversation, what do you wish it would be?
Marika:I think just, yeah, that people can take what opportunities they can to get more connected with the prairie and with nature in our city. Winnipeg's kinda we have a lot of opportunities to do that, but sometimes they're hidden away, you know. Lot of people haven't been to Living Prairie Museum, for example. Or maybe, you know, Assiniboine Forest is more your speed, but having a personal connection where you can or asking for that from from your city, think is a great idea. The prairie, although it's very rare and endangered, it's still there for everybody to enjoy and to learn more about.
Marika:So hopefully developing whatever the connection is you are looking for will help people do that. Whether it's just going for a walk or maybe it's doing and coming to an activity with your kids or something like that. But, you know, finding those opportunities to kind of slow down and enjoy what's around us.
Tamara:Thank you so much. We have one last question for you, and it's something we do ask everybody who comes on this show. What is something about Winnipeg you wish everyone knew? I mean, it could be about work and the Living Prairie.
Marika:Yeah.
Tamara:It can be about anything though.
Marika:It's word related, but it's personal related. Winnipeg does have all these hidden little gems around the city, whether it's the giant cottonwood trees at Macbeth Park, if you're way up on the North end of the city, or whether it's Living Prairie Museum out on the West side of the city or whether it's going for a nice walk at Kings Park down in the South end of town. And I could name a whole bunch of other ones. There are so many hidden beautiful places where people can just go for a walk, calm down, enjoy time with your family, whatever it is. And I think a lot of people don't realize that.
Marika:We think of this city as being maybe a little bit work a day or, you know, it doesn't have the mountains in the distance like Calgary or something like that. But there's many special little places that I think people can find in their own neighborhood. So, yeah. Do you have what's your
Tamara:favorite escape place in the city?
Marika:I live close to the Red River, and so I just really like to go down and walk along the banks in the wintertime. And in my neighborhood there's almost no one around, so, you know, I see eagles and ravens and coyotes and stuff. And it's it's really special.
Tamara:Thank you so much.
Marika:Thank you.
Tamara:Alright. From one spring type topic to another, we are talking next month flooding. We're gonna talk to the guy whose job it
Natalie:is to make sure Winnipeg stays dry. You know, and it's not just about, you know, rising rivers or or major rainstorms. Yeah. Far reaching conversation, and I think I think you might learn something.
Tamara:But before then, we wanna make sure that we're talking about things that you're interested in. So if you are a listener and wanna hear a topic here on this podcast, let us know. Email us city-podcast@winnipeg.ca, and we'll look into it. Thanks for listening.
Natalie:Talk to you next time.
