The creators of the county’s only prairie garden showed up on Saturday at the St. Mary’s Medical Center-Ironton Campus to take on the next step for the garden: weeding.

“We’re going to weed and replace what was killed during the winter,” Sheila Tackett, of the Rock Hill Garden Club, said.

But by 2017, those days will be long gone and that is one of the purposes of planting a prairie garden. It will become maintenance-free.

“The prairie garden has native plants and in three years we won’t have to weed or mulch or water. It will fill in. It takes time to grow.”

Among the plants at the garden are pale purple coneflowers, western sunflowers, false aloe and prairie dock.

The garden is a cooperative project by Ironton In Bloom, Rock Hill Garden Club and other community volunteers.