Meet the City Prairie team
Hello! We’re Connor and Bob Beck—a father/son team who sees a bare patch of grass and thinks, “That would make a great home for some purple coneflower, little bluestem, and a few monarch butterflies.”
We’ve been planting, growing, learning about, and marveling at prairie plants ever since Connor learned about the prairie ecosystem while taking an Ecofeminist Philosophy class at St. John’s University a decade ago.
This classroom experience taught Connor about how prairie can provide a solution to climate change by pulling carbon into its extensive root system. Although he didn’t know it at the time, that’s what sparked the idea for City Prairie.
From there, Connor deepened his appreciation for the prairie ecosystem by exploring the restored prairies and oak savannahs of St. John’s University. Being a lifelong learner and outdoorsman himself, Bob soon developed a sense of awe for the prairie, too.
Finally, after years of planning, Connor and Bob kicked off their inaugural season of City Prairie LLC in the spring of 2023. St. Anthony Park—Connor’s neighborhood—serves as their home base.
Since then, Connor and Bob have completed several projects in the area. They attribute their success to their neighbors in St. Anthony Park—compassionate, supportive people who care about pollinators, climate change, and living out their values.
They also owe their initial success to the prairie plants themselves. To Connor and Bob, these plants represent the spirit of Minnesota, and it’s one of their greatest joys to reconnect Minnesota to its ancient roots.
You can contact Connor and Bob by emailing them at CityPrairieLLC@gmail.com.
A brief land acknowledgement
City Prairie restores native habitat on the ancestral lands of the Dakȟóta people. We pay respects to their elders, past and present.
We include this acknowledgment because our work focuses in part on reconnecting present-day Minnesotans with the land's biological and historical heritage, which the Dakȟóta heavily influenced, even to this day (“Minnesota” is itself a Dakȟóta word meaning “The land where the water reflects the sky.”).
As individuals who work to restore native habitat, we follow in the footsteps of the Dakȟóta, who actively managed and cared for the prairie ecosystem. We can all learn from their example of what good stewardship looks like.
We see our work not as righting the past but as a way to move forward toward a future that is more harmonious for the multitude of people, plants, and animals that share and call this land home today.