Robert McColl knew he’d be in big trouble if he didn’t buy the perfect gift for his wife’s 70th birthday, which was right around the corner.

“Men don’t do birthdays well,” he joked.

Fortunately he put his mind to work months in advance and came up with the perfect $270,000 idea.

But he wanted to surprise his wife. Figuring out how to do that would be hard, since he wanted to make sure she liked the gift before he bought it.

“This is not chump change, at least for me,” McColl said.

McColl, Kansas University professor emeritus of geography and East Asian studies, was ready to give something back to KU. He had his eye on helping purchase 160 acres of land for the KU Field Station and Ecological Reserves, three miles north of Lawrence.

So, he took his wife out to see the land. He figured if she asked him anything, he would just tell her he was looking at where the “kiosk or Porta-Potty” he was donating to the research property was going to go. After all, he never dreamed of giving anything more than that, he said.

In the end, McColl’s surprise played out and he donated the money to the KU Endowment Association to purchase the land in honor of his wife.

“It never dawned on me that my husband would go all out and buy the whole ball of wax,” Suzanne McColl said.

About 100 people visited the property Saturday morning, when KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway dedicated the Suzanne Ecke McColl Reserve, which will help prevent any development of a 10-acre research prairie.

The Rockefeller Prairie is important to KU researchers because less than 1 percent of native prairie in Douglas County survives, and two rare plants, Mead’s milkweed and the western prairie fringed orchid, grow there. The donated land stands in front of the prairie.

“We need the land to be able to do our work,” said Helen Alexander, KU professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “By having this land protected, it just makes a huge difference.”

In addition to serving as a buffer to the prairie, the KU Endowment Association has plans to develop a $60,000 1,200-foot nature trail around the prairie, which will be open to the general public.

“The land can be appreciated for many years : and enjoyed by the entire community,” Suzanne McColl said.

“It’s a very good thing,” Robert McColl said.

Other contributors, including Dave and Barbara Clark; Tensie Oldfather; the Ethel and Raymond Rice Foundation; Elizabeth Avery Schultz; the Wallace Genetic Foundation; and the Wilderness Community Education Foundation helped purchase the buffer land. The McColl donation was the largest.