Artist Matthew Dehaemers’ longtime vision to merge a family-owned natural tallgrass prairie, the world of cut flowers and contemporary art is coming to fruition.
“It’s a perfect match,” says the artist, who is no stranger to merging disparate worlds through his large public art pieces, such as his galvanized steel Seven Sentinels art piece at KC’s municipal tow lot. The Leawood native’s work can be found throughout Kansas City and the Midwest at sites such as Arrowhead Stadium and Operation Breakthrough at 31st and Troost.
His latest endeavor is a cut-your-own flower farm with the usual garden-variety flowers intermingled with native prairie flowers. The farm is just west of town off K-10 Highway a few miles south of Eudora. This very personal project is also public, just like Dehaemers’ art.
Visitors can create their own colorful bouquets from native prairie flowers and foliage, plus traditional garden favorites. At the same stop, they can browse through Dehaemers’ studio and tour a hilltop prairie that’s home to butterflies, bees and more than 100 types of plants and flowers.
“I’ve always loved landscaping and trying to compose with plants that are tall and short and have different bloom times,” he says. “It’s like this is my other canvas.”
Dehaemers’ name for his flower farm, Compass Prairie Art Farm, is a nod to the iconic compass plant, which can grow 10 feet high and live for 100 years. The plant produces sunflower-like blossoms, grows a long, sturdy taproot and often orients its leaves on a north-south axis.
There is so little natural tallgrass prairie left; Dehaemers says that his family’s plot, which was purchased by his wife’s grandfather in the 1960s, makes them caretakers of an increasingly rare and ecologically valuable plot of land. By many accounts, these types of pre-settlement grasslands that once sustained bison and Native Indians have shrunk to less than a percentage point of an area that used to span 14 states and cover millions of acres.
Alongside his family prairie, Dehaemers has designed geometric-shaped beds into “walls of flowers” that offer coneflowers, cosmos, basket flowers, bachelor buttons, sea holly, pineapple sage, sunflowers and many-hued zinnias for making bouquets. Prairie flowers such as rattlesnake master, goldenrod, aster, blazing star, black-eyed Susan and compass plant can be added, too, although Dehaemers will do the cutting on those. That’s to make sure the prairie is not over-picked and continues to prosper, he says.
The heritage tallgrass prairie is not maintenance-free. Dehaemers battles invasive weeds like lespedeza and bull thistle, and every three years the acreage must be burned.
“It’s just an incredible thing,” he says. “You burn it black, a few weeks later it’s green and then everything explodes with growth.”
In addition to his original 10-acre prairie, Dehaemers is restoring a previously plowed eight-acre parcel back to prairie. But that never truly works, he says, because the complex relationship between plants and microorganisms that exist in the soil takes thousands of years to establish.
Future ideas for the farm include offering artist residencies in a small house on the property, creating an open-air chapel for weddings and building an amphitheater from limestone blocks terraced into the side of a slope. Dehaemers is taking the advice of an architect friend, though, who told him not to rush into decisions. He’s letting the next step occur organically, perhaps like some of his smaller art pieces that mix tree branches, bird netting, chicken wire and old farm tools with embroidery thread, paint and fabric.
“It’s an embarrassment of riches out here,” Dehaemers says. “I’m kind of in awe of nature—how amazing it looks and how full of intricacies and complexities it is.”
Dehaemers will be selling flowers in mid-September at Limitless Brewing Company’s Oktoberfest in Lenexa. The following month, three artist friends will join him in showcasing their work on Oct. 5-6, when Compass Prairie Art Farm welcomes visitors during the Kaw Valley Farm Tour.Meanwhile, the farm (1923 N. 800 Road, Eudora, KS) is open for gathering bouquets, starting at $15, on Saturday mornings and some Tuesday evenings. Check the Matthew Dehaemers Facebook page for details.
