Texas was largely a sea of grass and flowers before European settlers arrived in the 1700s, with prairie land spanning from the plains of West Texas to the edge of the Piney Woods in East Texas, and stretching from the Gulf Coast all the way past the Red River and beyond into Canada in a vast North American ecosystem that supported billions of birds, butterflies, bees, bison and other animals, some of which migrated with the seasonal cycles of the flowers and grasses.Ī prairie remnant in Fort Worth that was subsequently bulldozed to build school. MARSHALL HINSLEY: Installed with the help of the elementary students, the new pocket prairie adds to a network of prairie restoration efforts that as a whole will help to piece back together the prairie land that once covered the majority of the state. Our native pollinators need our native plants, and you just can't get those at a garden center.” MARSHALL HINSLEY: She’s the director of education for the Native Prairies Association of Texas, an organization that helps schools, businesses, municipalities and landowners learn about and recover part of the state’s natural heritage through prairie restoration that ranges from large-scale projects to tiny pocket prairies such as the one at Parker Elementary.ĭELLA BARBATO: “We're growing minds in the way that the students learn firsthand how important native plants are, how important native prairies are, because the insects do not feed from the nectar or pollen from all of these landscape plants that come from Europe and Asia and Africa. Students at Parker Elementary in Houston install a 220-square foot pocket prairie. Salvias and fall obedient plant will provide nectar for hummingbirds before they head back south in the fall.įrom December to February, insects that overwinter in leaf litter and the hollow centers of dead or dormant plant stems will be protected from frigid temperatures and emerge in the spring- a web of life experiencing the cycles of the seasons - all in an area about the size of the average dining room.ĭELLA BARBATO: “We wanted a place for the teachers, and the students to learn about the importance of native plants, native prairies and our native pollinators,” says Della Barbato who organized the project. Milkweed will attract monarch butterflies that can raise their young on no other plant. In the spring, bluebonnets will emerge as the first flowers to bloom, covering the plot in shades of indigo.Īs summer approaches, Indian blanket will repaint the plot into the hotter orange and yellow colors of summertime. The 220-square-foot, U-shaped garden grows off to one side the school between the building and the street. Planted on a small plot of land on the grounds of Parker Elementary in the Houston Independent School District, Texas native grasses and flowers grow as a tiny part of a huge restoration effort of one of the world’s most disturbed ecosystems. MARSHALL HINSLEY: How you can help to restore Texas to its native state with a pocket prairie, in this episode of the Texas Green Report, a production of Green Source DFW and the Memnosyne Institute.
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