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• St. Jude Medical -- Restoration and Prairie Gardens on a Corporate Site Page 2 of 7 sustainability with a sense that the place was cared for. The term restoration was never used to describe this project. Yet, if landscape restoration is a reconstruction of the structure and function of a past ecosystem, this project has many components of a restoration. For Hagstrom the past is simply a model to study. It is not a landscape that must be replicated religiously. He selected prairie, oak savanna, and oak woodland as his models for this project and focused on form -- the plant species. To integrate nature with the human activities that will occur in this place, Hagstrom targeted only a few ecosystem functions (biodiversity, healthy soil, etc.). AN OVERVIEW OF THE SITE Before European settlement this 11 -acre site was most likely oak savanna. An abandoned farm house next door suggests farming and the pasturing of animals occurred here. When St. Jude Medical began construction in 1993, the site contained a disturbed gravel pit, a dense oak woodland, and a small remnant oak savanna. Gravel from the site was used years ago for improvements of Highway 36 and Populus deltoides (cottonwood) near the gravel pit were 30 - 40 years old. There were low areas on the property which held water seasonally. The soil on the site is sandy and gravely. Because the building was newly constructed most of the site was regraded. Twelve inches of top soil was brought in and spread over the lawn and garden areas. The property today can be divided into several landscape areas (acreage is approximate): 1. Parking lots and building -- two acres 2. Prairie gardens (1/2 acre) and turf areas (1/2 acre) -- one acre 3. Natural areas: Prairie and savanna - -five acres Creek and pond -- part of prairie Oak woodland -- three acres THE PRAIRIE GARDENS The gardens merge native plants with traditional design techniques. These are formal gardens at the street entrance and the building entrance. Rather then describe each in detail, I will discuss some of the techniques the designer employed. These techniques are used only in the prairie gardens, not in the prairie and savanna areas. 1. Augmenting native plants with non - native plants. There will always be people that insist on the use of only native plants for restorations and naturalized gardens. The St. Jude Medical site uses primarily native species but augments them with cultivars of related native species, species slightly out of their range, and bedding plants and bulbs. o Cultivars of related native species. In this project, to obtain a specific plant size or form, a cultivar of a related species may replace a native species. For example, Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldsturm' has bold flowers which are held above a dense canopy of deep green foliage. It has a compact cushion form. This is used instead of the native species Rudbeckia hirta which generally lacks the luxurious foliage and bunching form. Cornus sericea 'Isanti', the Isanti dogwood, replaces the native species C. stolonifera because it grows only five -feet high instead of the eight to ten feet of the native. o Species out of their range. The designer uses plants representative of the model plant communities -- prairie, oak savanna, woodland. However, not all the plants present are native in this region. The natural range of Echinacea purpurea (purple coneflower) for http: / /www.hort. agri. umn .edu /h5015 /96papers /gayner.htm 2/22/01