The Westport Garden Club’s Partners for Plants Funds Collaboration with Kansas City WildLands to Restore and Protect Local Prairie.

Restoring the Prairie Legacy at Jerry Smith Park in Kansas City, Missouri

December 17, 2025

By: Amy Brown

Since 2012, The Westport Garden Club (WGC) has received GCA Partners for Plants (P4P) grants to partner with Kansas City WildLands (KCWL) to restore native habitat at Jerry Smith Park, the only known, unplowed prairie left in Jackson County, MO. Its tall grasses and wildflowers hold a rare living history of the Midwest. The park supports endangered pollinator species and plant populations and today the land tells a story of restoration, collaboration, and hope.

For more than a decade, the WGC and KCWL have invested volunteer hours and funding to protect this fragile treasure. The P4P funds endowed a KCWL seed technician to train and coordinate volunteers to document plants and bees, propagate native species, and return the plants to the prairie.

In 2024 alone, KCWL’s Seed Team collected 220 native species—271 pounds of seed—much of which was sown into Jerry Smith Park after a prescribed burn created fertile ground. Hundreds of volunteers contributed nearly 1,500 hours to this effort. Each seed was local genotype—genetically diverse and adapted to withstand regional threats.

Results are evident. Forbs, which are herbaceous, broadleaf plants and the focus of this year’s collection, both brighten the prairie with color and sustain bees, butterflies, and other threatened pollinators. Volunteers scatter seed in newly restored areas under the guidance of trained leaders who ensure careful harvesting and long-term stewardship.

The prairie’s impact reaches beyond beauty. It sequesters carbon, filters stormwater in the Blue River watershed, and offers city residents a glimpse of the wild Missouri that once stretched endlessly across the plains.

This work is painstaking and ongoing, but each pound of seed, each hour of care, strengthens the prairie’s resilience. Jerry Smith Park has become a living classroom, a sanctuary for biodiversity, and a gift to future generations.