Songwood is a 7+ acre specialty cut flower farm located on what was once the Illinois Tallgrass Prairie — one of the most diverse flowering ecosystems on the continent.

Illinois lies within an area called the "prairie peninsula", an eastward extension of prairies that borders deciduous forests to the north, east, and south. This part of the tallgrass prairie region is sometimes called the true prairie. Although the vegetation in a prairie can sometimes reach heights of 10 feet or more, most of the living material in a prairie ecosystem is actually below ground in roots, microbes, insects, and other burrowing animals.

The activities of these organisms, over the millennia, created the deep, rich topsoil of Illinois and the broader Midwest. The natural landscape of Illinois is divided into 23 prairie types which are the result of variations in soil moisture, topography, soil composition, geological substrate, glacial history, and the distribution of plants and animals. Songwood is located on what was once the Grand Prairie, or black soil prairie, characterized by dark‐colored, fertile soils.

Once the fertility of the soil was discovered, the black soil prairie practically disappeared in a span of 50 years, largely converted to industrialized monocultures of corn and soybeans. In fact, pristine tallgrass prairie is now the rarest of North America's major biomes. Today, less than one-hundredth of one percent of true tallgrass prairie remains in Illinois.

In its prime, the black soil prairie was a veritable wildflower garden containing several hundred species of grasses and forbs including clovers, sunflowers, coneflowers, daisies, goldenrod, and milkweed.

And of course, the prairie did all of this without help. The grasses, the wildflowers, the burrowing animals, the microbes in the topsoil — they made each other, over millennia, into one of the most productive flowering ecosystems on the continent.

The species of flowers we grow now are different — dahlias, zinnias, and the descendants of varieties bred far from here — but the act of growing flowers in this soil is older than any of us. We grow without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, or fungicides, and we leave plenty of room for the natives that built this land in the first place.

Our dedication to land stewardship is shaped by the depth of time — its fertile past, the grasslanders who tended it before us, and the work of restoring living, resilient soil for the future.