- "Oklahoma Gardening" is a production of the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, as part of the land grant mission of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University, dedicated to improving the quality of life of the citizens of Oklahoma through research based information.

Underwriting assistance for our program is provided by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, helping to keep Oklahoma green and growing.

Welcome back to "Oklahoma Gardening," as we continue our Northeastern regional tour.

We started in Eastern Oklahoma with a visit to Greenleaf Nursery to learn more about their history.

As we make our way west, we stop by the Keystone Ancient Forest to learn more about the Oklahoma Nature Conservancy and the work that they're doing across our great state.

We then head to one of their signature sites, the tall grass prairie, where we learn more about the preserve and its pollinators.

(upbeat guitar music) As we head around Northeastern Oklahoma, we would be remiss, if we didn't stop at one of our favorite places, Greenleaf Nursery.

Joining me again today is Mark Andrews, who has a long tenure here with Greenleaf.

Mark, normally you and I talk a little bit about plants, but today I would like to just talk about the history of Greenleaf Nursery.

They've been a big player in this part of the country for a long time.

Can you tell me a little bit about Greenleaf Nursery's history?

- So Greenleaf Nursery started as a cash and carry retail garden center over in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1945.

Harold and Rebecca Nickel started the facility over there and sold plants there.

The original facility, the buildings are still over there.

The family no longer owns the property, but it's still there.

So, that's where it all started, and then in the '50s, John Nickel, their oldest son, started working with the company, and they quickly realized that two families couldn't be supported by that small retail facility.

So they decided to start growing their own plants.

And so they started looking for another facility to start growing plants, and Lake Tenkiller was just being constructed at the time.

The dam was being built in 1955.

And so the lake came into existence, and so they bought property over here.

And this is the original location for the wholesale end of the growing facility.

- [Casey] Okay.

- As the company continued to grow, then it became important to go ahead and diversify and spread out.

So the first step in that progress was to buy a nursery down in Texas.

- Okay.

- Outside of El Campo, Texas, and the purpose for that facility was to grow plants for the Texas market, but also to put plants down there, that you wouldn't have to spend as much money over wintering 'em.

- [Casey] Right.

- [Mark] As we do up here.

- [Casey] They got a little warmer climate.

- They're warmer, and El Campo had never had a frost or freeze ever, until 1981.

Then they suddenly had a freeze, and so they protect plants just as much as we do in Oklahoma.

And, John's younger brother Gil was involved in the development of that facility, bringing it online.

So then, in the mid-1990s, we purchased land and started a facility in Tarboro, North Carolina, and so its focus is to produce plants for the Northeast.

And essentially the reason for the locations is now we ship plants basically to all states east of the Rocky Mountains.

We don't go generally too far west, beyond the front range of the Rockies, but we serve all of the Eastern United States, and our locations are such, that we're within a one day's delivery window for all nurseries.

John has always been involved quite a bit with protecting nature and everything.

Number of years ago, he worked with the Nature Conservancy to create the Nickel Preserve further up on the Illinois River, north of Tahlequah, and over there, he has worked with them to reestablish a native population of elk that used to exist in Northeast Oklahoma, got exterminated, and now they've been reintroduced back into the state.

- All right, well it's so exciting to have this amazing place right here in our backyard in Oklahoma.

And Mark, thank you, it's always a pleasure to talk with you again.

- Thank you, appreciate it.

(upbeat guitar music) - Today, we are in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, at the Keystone Ancient Forest, and joining me today is Katie Gillies with the Nature Conservancy.

Katie, thanks so much for meetin' us out here.

This is a magical place.

- Yeah.

I love this place.

- So tell us a little bit about why this forest is so important.

- Yeah, so Keystone Ancient Forest is just outside of Tulsa, and it's in the Cross Timbers ecoregion, and this place right here is home to some of the oldest recorded Post Oak and Blackjack Oaks that we know of within the Cross Timbers.

- Which is so important, especially, as you head into that central part of Oklahoma, we're really at that median.

And tell us a little bit, this is just one area that's protected by the Nature Conservancy here in Oklahoma.

- Yeah, so the Nature Conservancy, we protect about 108,000 acres here across Oklahoma.

- And that may mean that have a conservation easement on it, or it may mean that we own it and protect it as a preserve.

And you guys may know some of our preserves across the state.

- So tell us a few of those.

If you can kind of tease a couple of those that people maybe could go visit.

- Yeah.

A couple that we have open to the public that people probably know about of course is our Tallgrass Prairie Preserve outside of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

That's about 40,000 acres, and we have about 2,500 bison on that.

And that is the largest protected track remaining of the tall grass prairie ecosystem.

So that's a big one.

And then another one that people probably are familiar with is our JT Nickel Preserve, which is over in Cherokee County in the Ozarks.

And that's about 17,000 acres of protected Ozarks over there.

- [Casey] And completely drastically different ecologically, right?

- [Katie] Yeah.

Very different.

So the Ozarks have a lot more, of course, topography, they have that karst, that limestone geology underneath of it.

- [Casey] Right.

- [Katie] And so a lot more diversity in their trees and plants than we have here in the cross timbers.

- [Casey] Okay.

And you even have elk, right?

Over in Eastern Oklahoma?

Is that what I understand?

- [Katie] Yes, we do.

We have a number of elk and we have black bear over there as well.

- Okay.

So you're not just looking at the plant material, which I might be concerned with, but you're actually looking at the whole ecological aspect, with the bison on the Tallgrass Prairie to the elk over in the eastern side.

- Yeah.

We take a holistic approach to conservation.

- So are there more properties that you're actually helping and working with groups to maintain?

- Yeah, so of course the Nature Conservancy is a global nonprofit.

And so we protect nature all around the world, but here in Oklahoma, the two ones that we have open to the public of course are Tall Grass and the Nickel Preserve.

This we protect in conjunction with the City of Sand Springs, and then we have a number of other properties that we don't have open to the public, maybe because, you know, they protect, like, a cave resource, which could be, you know... - For bats?

- For bats, yes.

Which could be, you know, easily jeopardized with visitation.

- Right.

- We also have protection out in the short grass prairie of western Oklahoma.

And we have some preserves that we protect down in the Arbuckle Plains down by Ada, sort of more mixed-grass prairie.

And then we've even got some really cool swamp properties down in southeastern Oklahoma.

- Oh, okay.

Okay, so you have employees that are helping with all of these different sites.

Because I think a lot of times we think Tallgrass Prairie maybe, the first word's not the Nature Conservancy, but those are your folks up there too.

- [Katie] Those are our folks taking care of everything up there.

Yeah.

Yeah, so most of our properties, we do have staff working at on a daily basis and some we don't.

You know, we just cover it through, you know, sort of just regular visitation and partnerships.

- [Casey] Yeah.

- [Katie] So the Nature Conservancy is a global organization.

We work in 72 countries and every single state in the United States, and our mission is to protect the land and waters on which all life resides.

And that may mean that we work-- we purchase a property and own it and love it forever and take care of it as a preserve.

It may mean that we work in partnership with places like the City of Sand Springs on this.

And it may also mean that we work on issues like climate change.

- Well, we appreciate what y'all are doing here in Oklahoma specifically and, of course, across the globe as well.

If somebody wants more information about visiting some of these places here in Oklahoma or what you guys are doing specifically here in Oklahoma, where can they find more information about it?

- The easiest way to get information is to go to nature.org/Oklahoma.

You can find out our places that are open to the public and learn more about our mission and our other work.

- All right.

Thank you so much Katie.

Appreciate it.

- Thanks for having me.

(energetic western music) - On our Northeast regional tour, we would be remiss if we didn't visit the Tallgrass Prairie.

We are just north of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

And joining me today is Bob Hamilton, who is the director of the Tallgrass Prairie.

Bob, it's beautiful out here even in end of July.

Thank you for having us.

- Even when it's toasty.

Yeah, yeah.

- So tell us a little bit, for somebody who maybe has not been here before.

what is this place all about?

- Well, welcome.

- Thank you.

- Glad you're here, Casey.

- The Tallgrass Prairie, I think, is one of those iconic North American landscapes.

So, unfortunately it's one of the most highly, or the most highly converted landscape that we have in North America.

So the estimates are only about 4% of the original Tallgrass Prairie remains.

So 96% or so has been converted, primarily to crop land.

So this is the eastern part of the Great Plains of North America.

Some of the most fertile soils, good rainfall.

So, much of it's been converted to corn, soybeans, wheat.

- And it used to stretch up to Nebraska and further?

- Used to be.

Yeah, roughly it used to have, yeah, roughly about 140 million acres from Texas up to southern Canada.

So kind of that whole eastern part of the Great Plains.

- And so here you have bison roaming around-- we have some way off in the distance, - We do, we do.

- Basically in the distance over here.

- Yeah.

- And, they're an important part of this, but you're kind of stewarding this and getting it back to how it used to be managed by the bison and the fire.

Tell us a little bit about that.

- Well, the, the mission of the Nature Conservancy, the organization-- the nonprofit group that owns and manages the preserve-- is to conserve all life, and basically it comes down to habitat protection.

And so in these Great Plains grasslands, what we think is extremely important in terms of providing habitat for all those species is a heterogeneous, or a diverse, landscape.

Different species require different types of habitat.

And so the idea is to create and maintain this shifting landscape patch mosaic.

- At any given moment in time you have patches on the landscape that have been fairly recently disturbed in terms of natural disturbance, grazing and fire and then other patches on the landscape that have been years since that, and so there's different species that require all those different niches, and so it's, it's kinda like building and maintaining a living arc.

- And when you say species, we're not talking about just plant species, we're talking about animal species and insect species, all of those come into play.

- All that good biodiversity.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yup.

- So, you know, when I first saw prescribed burning happening, I was like you missed a spot- (both laugh) but that's that's okay, you know, because it goes where the fuel is- - Right.

- and then you that's that patchwork effect that it creates.

- Yeah.

And then the bison, of course, grazing in fire, we think we're one of the supreme influences historically on these Great Plains grassland.

Burn it and they will come.

It's a global phenomenon with herbivores that it's all about forge quality that lush regrowth that comes up after a fire.

Wow.

That's just ice cream.

But we do know, historically of course, bison were the were the primary grazer historically in these Great Plains grasslands, and, oh my goodness, boy you burn a patch and they are on it.

It's just like, you know, candy out out of the landscape.

- So, and, and while this is one of the, if not the largest preserve of this ecosystem, I mean it's fairly small compared to what it used to be, but how large is your preserve here?

- We have about 40,000 acres that we manage, and in addition to that, we have conservation easements and other land protection tools that we put out there on about another 11,000 acres around us.

- Okay.

So tell us a little bit about the bison.

Obviously that's an interest for a lot of people.

You know, how do you manage that?

Or they just roam around free or?

- They just kinda do their thing.

Yeah, yeah.

As long as they don't sneak up on it, we're okay.

We try to manage bison to really manage for their wildness.

We're still their inherent strengths.

This is one of 12 bison herds that the Nature Conservancy owns and manages.

We put bison back into these native prairies kind of in a an attempt to put the ecological "Humpty" back together.

- Okay.

- So yeah, we put bison back here.

We introduced our starter herd in the fall of '93 took about 15 years to build up to the stable herd size that we have.

So now we're capped at about typically we over winter about 16 or 1700 bison and then we'll have six to 700 babies in the springtime.

- So what's then managing an ecosystem, you always have a wolf, right, or something that kinda- - Yeah.

Yeah.

- so who's managing the bison?

- Yeah.

There are limits in all systems right?

And so, yeah, we are the Wolf, as I think of it, part of our restoration attempt.

So I think a lot of our work out here is process restoration.

Let's get the Prairie functioning as it used to historically, that grazing fire interaction, wherest predators would've been a big part of that system historically.

We have no plans to reintroduce wolves.

The wolf would've been the primary historic predator on bison.

That's just an impractical idea in a privately owned landscape.

What's all around us is privately owned ranches, and so we just, we just can't really go there, and so we are the wolf as I think of it, so, we try to round the entire bison heard up in the fall usually late October, early November.

Two primary reasons.

One is health maintenance.

We wanna make sure that the bison are healthy.

We want really wanna make sure also that we don't have a disease situation that could impact our rancher neighbors.

- Right.

You keep mentioning restoration of the Prairie.

So are there like objectives or is, and I know a garden's never done, not that this is a garden but a landscape has ever evolving, but is this pretty restored or what are some of those other benchmarks that you're trying to achieve?

- It's restored in terms of kind of that process level restoration that grazing fire, all the research that we've we've had going on indicates that that's working pretty well to to meet our objectives of the conservation of biological diversity.

It's working real well for plant animal conservation.

But you're never really done, and so as many landowners and conservation agencies and others are dealing with, invasive species are common problem, and, and we sure have our our little challenges out here.

Sericea lespedeza is probably our biggest non-woody invasive plant problem.

That's a plant that was introduced on purpose over a hundred years ago from Southeast Asia, and so it's crept out into these native prairies.

What makes it so successful is it builds up tannins in its tissues, and so it causes an imbalance in a grazing animal's stomach.

So it's kinda a chemical defense sort - So they don't wanna eat it.

- So that's a tough one.

Yeah.

- Okay.

- Yeah, and the other big issue, of course, as we're seeing globally, is increase of woody species in these native grasslands and that's happening around the world, and there's a lot of discussion on what's really driving that, but we know a lot of it is from altered fire regime.

So the way with settlement, how we've altered that fire pattern on the landscape, has allowed things like Eastern Redcedar, which is the native species, to creep out into the Prairie, and the green glacier is something that's been talked about from our friends at Oklahoma State University some of their publications, but those Juniper species from Texas, Oklahoma up through the Great Plains, it's a problem now up in Nebraska even.

- Okay.

- And so, again, that's from altered fire regime.

Those Eastern Redcedars are fairly easily controlled by fire until they get to be big, and then in terms of fire management, they become a problem 'cause they're so explosive, and then also in terms of woody stuff one thing we are actively trying to push on now in the last few years is kind of creeping brush invasion.

So some of these clonal species that we have out here, like Dogwood, Roughleaf Dogwood and Sumac and some of the plum species.

- [Interviewee] Started as an individual, and after 20, 30 years you have a 50-foot diameter mott.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Interviewee] Or an island, and then trees start growing up through the middle of that.

And so it changes, it changes the prairie, from the prairie to more of a woodland type system.

And we know species like prairie chickens, the greater prairie chicken that we have here, they are very sensitive and intolerant of any vertical fragmentation, whether you're talking an Eastern red cedar tree, a hackberry tree, a wind tower, anything vertical like that, their hard-wiring through the eons has been to avoid those.

- [Casey] Anything tall?

- [Interviewee] Yes, especially hens, when they're nesting.

- This is sort of a laboratory, right?

- It is.

- Because it is one of the only places where you can step back into time and see these processes.

- Yeah.

- So tell us a little bit about the research that's come off of that.

Obviously, with the prairie chickens and other things as well.

- Yeah, yeah, we're about, a little over 200 scientific publications that have been produced from the preserve.

The Nature Conservancy is not a research institution ourselves, we're science-driven, science influences, guides us, what lands are important, what species are important, our strategies, how we're monitoring our success, our land management.

Science informs all that, but we are not a research institution, but we reach out to, and try to form partnerships, especially with folks like Oklahoma State University.

Especially when it comes to trying to engage in the conservation issues of the broader neighborhood, who better to work with than than the extension experts right out there?

- [Casey] Right, well, obviously, there's so much to see here.

Where can a visitor find more information about the Tall Grass Prairie?

- I'd suggest going on the website, so, tnc.org, and you can drill down to the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve and see all kinds of information.

The preserve is open to the public every day of the year.

The there's about 20 miles of public roads, gravel, (laughs) before forewarned, County gravel roads that run through the preserve, most of that being in the bison unit.

So it's an open range situation.

You break 'em, you buy 'em, so don't bump into any Bison.

(laughs) But it's quite variable today.

You know, the bison are kind of off the County road, but some days we have those Yellowstone-type experiences where you become the pebble in the stream and the bison flow around your vehicles, and they lick your mirrors and rub on your car.

But don't get out.

- Yes.

- So, kind of respect their wildness.

But yeah, the preserve is open every day of the year.

At headquarters, at the the old Chapman-Barnard Ranch headquarters, we have a visitor center that's run by docent volunteers.

They're trained to, to talk to people about what The Nature Conservancy's doing, the Native American history, cattle ranching history, oil and gas, kind of whatever whatever you wanna hear about.

And we have a set of self-guided hiking trails, right there near headquarters, up to about three miles.

Scenic turnouts along the way on the County road.

So it's kind of a self-guided type experience.

- [Casey] Yeah.

- [Interviewee] No theme parks, no water slides, (laughs) but I think of the Prairie as this very subtle landscape.

And I think what makes it interesting is learning how it works and learning who's here, in terms of the native plants and animals.

- Well, it's absolutely beautiful.

And thank you so much for sharing it with us, Bob.

- Thank you, appreciate you coming out.

(country music) - We are here at the Tall Grass Prairie, and joining me today is the pollinator outreach coordinator, Stephanie Jordan.

Stephanie, thanks so much for joining us out here.

- Good to see you.

- So one of the things that Tall Grass Prairie is known for is the biodiversity.

- Right.

- How critical is that for our pollinators?

- It's so important for our pollinators.

There is a huge variety of native flowering pollinator plants out here, but there are particularly crucial plants out here that the Monarch butterfly needs.

And as most of your viewers are aware of, probably, the Monarch butterflies come through Oklahoma in the spring, and then they come back through in the fall.

We'll start seeing them in late September, early October.

But the spring migrators are the ones that we really like to think about in terms of milkweed.

The Monarchs that go down to Mexico and over-winter are not reproducing.

But as the day lengths gets a little bit longer and the temperatures increase they start getting the signal to become fully mature and start making baby Monarchs.

And so they do that as they're starting to migrate north.

The Monarchs start laying eggs around mid-Texas and lay eggs all the way up until, a little bit north of here in Kansas.

And so it's crucial that they're able to find milkweed to lay their eggs on.

And so at Tall Grass Prairie, we have many, many varieties of milkweed.

This one is common milkweed.

It's a really fun milkweed.

It's got big funky pods.

- [Casey] I was gonna say, it's done blooming now.

- [Stephanie] Yeah.

- [Casey] But those pods that it has on there is just so impressive.

- Those pods, yeah.

And then when they turn brown and crack those seeds are ready to harvest.

So when those spring monarchs are coming through here they can find their larval host plant and make their babies.

And you can imagine when that first, when that first generation is really successful and can find a whole lot of milkweed, then we're gonna have a bigger, bigger, bigger overwintering population going back down the next fall.

And so it's really great that we have this 62 contiguous square miles of native pollinator plants and milkweed.

But what my job is.

- Uh-huh.

- Is to encourage people to create their own little pocket prairie pollinator garden at home, to get them, to serve them along the way, so.

- Right, we don't all have this land mass.

- We don't all have 62 square miles but if you have six by two.

- Right.

- Feet of garden.

- Then you can plan a diversity of plants that'll support all the pollinators and hopefully you could get some milkweed in there, too.

All of this is naturally occurring.

None of this has been seeded.

And so a lot of their naturally occurring milkweed has gone away, due to loss of habitat and development.

But the biggest chunk of it has been because of Roundup Ready crops.

This kind of milkweed used to really be an issue for farmers.

But when all that milkweed went away, then then we have to step up and help them out and support them.

- Right, so Stephanie, I know you're not fighting this fight alone.

So you're also partnered with Okies for Monarchs, is that correct?

- That's correct, The Nature Conservancy of Oklahoma is a big supporter of Okies for Monarchs.

And I work together with a big team of people there to get information out about planning native pollinator plants.

And you can go to the website at oakiesformonarchs.org and there are tons and tons of resources.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Stephanie] But other pollinators come to the milkweed too.

Different milkweed functions, a little bit differently.

And this one is very, very popular with the Monarch caterpillars.

But one of the more common milkweeds that we find is butterfly milkweed.

And that one is not as popular for laying larva on, but it makes a crown of a whole bunch of flowers.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Stephanie] And so that's a really important nectaring plant in the fall.

And in the fall, when we have the fall migration, we like to think about, they need food.

They don't need so much nursery, but they need food.

- [Casey] We're trying to get 'em back to Mexico, right?

- [Stephanie] We're trying to 'em back to Mexico, so we wanna fuel 'em up.

And, and so when your butterfly milkweed, when it stops blooming, it's gonna put on a pretty little pod.

And you can wait for that pod to turn brown and pop and then you can save those seeds and put 'em down before winter comes.

They need to feel a little bit of winter so that they get certain cues going in the seeds.

- [Casey] So not only good for pollinators, but also just your garden interest.

- [Stephanie] Yeah, it is good for your garden interest, but what I found is that, psychologically, when you start bringing all of this beauty into your life, it's really good for you, psychologically.

- [Casey] Yeah.

- Not everybody has the time to come to this beautiful preserve, and so if you can make just a little pocket preserve at your own house.

- Yeah.

- That's really great.

And we need an army of people to support all of our pollinators.

- And connecting those backyards all the way to Canada, right?

- That's right that's right.

Yeah, we have our bison stay here, but the Monarchs are in motion and so they need they need lots and lots of pit stops along the way.

- All right, Stephanie, thank you so much for this information.

- Thanks a lot.

(bluegrass music) (bluegrass music continues) - [Casey] There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

Be sure and consider some of these events in the weeks ahead.

(bluegrass music) (bluegrass music continues) Next week, join us right here on Oklahoma Gardening, as we complete our Northeastern Oklahoma tour, as we visit large and small public and private gardens.

(soft music) (soft music continues) To find out more information about show topics, as well as recipes, videos, articles, fact sheets, and other resources, including a directory of local extension offices, Be sure to visit our website at oklahomagardening.okstate.edu.

Join in on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

You can find this entire show and other recent shows, as well as individual segments, on our Oklahoma Gardening YouTube channel.

Tune in to our OK Gardening Classics YouTube channel to watch segments from previous hosts.

Oklahoma Gardening is produced by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, as part of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

The Botanic Garden at OSU is home to our studio garden, and we encourage you to come visit this beautiful Stillwater gem.

We would like to thank our generous underwriter, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.

Additional support is also provided by Pond Pro Shop, Greenleaf Nursery, and the Garden Debut Plants, the Tulsa Garden Center at Woodward Park, the Oklahoma Horticultural Society, Smart Pot, and the Tulsa Garden Club.

(soft music)