Passion Leads to Saving, Planting Native Prairie Areas In Johnston

We're often told to follow our passion.

But few people have successfully parlayed their passion into a life-long career the way Inger Lamb has.

Lamb, owner of Prairie Lanscapes LLC, turned a love of native plants into a thriving business.

"All my life I've been interested in plants," Lamb, who lives near Saylorville Lake, said. "Even as a kid I was interested in house plants and farming."

Growing up in Flint, MI, a very industrial community, Lamb's mother, who was originally from Iowa, brought her on vacations to Iowa, where she became fascinated by plants.

"I ended up with a Ph.d in plant sciences," she said.

Then after becoming a mother, Lamb stayed home with her son and volunteered at the botanical garden in St. Louis.

"That introduced me to prairie," she said. "It hit me like a ton of bricks, we had moved from Ohio to St. Louis and I was trying to grow things like dahlias that don't like 10 months of hot weather. The idea to have plants you can plant and develop them was appealing."

When the family moved to Iowa, Lamb jumped at the chance to help with her son's elementary school's large prairie garden.

"That led me to Iowa Prairie Network," she said. "Now I'm going on 12 years there."

Lamb has used her expertise to help Johnston neighborhoods cultivate their acres of prairie.

"My company has helped in Green Meadows West and Aston Pointe," she said. "They have 12 acres of common ground that had been prairie but wasn't managed. So we put in massive amount of work that has really come along, it's beautiful."

Lamb also helps individual clients.

"One client had me come over because she couldn't grow grass," she said. "She was getting all this water from the houses above her. So we put in plants that like to be wet."

Above all, Lamb enjoys getting people excited about their landscape.

"I love getting people excited about using native plants. It's not just that they are kind of leisurely to garden since there is little maintenance, but it's also replacing a little bit of what we lost in the state of Iowa in original landscape."