Pershing Middle School students, under the direction of teacher Frank Abbott, participated in a ground-breaking, semester-long conservation project whose aim was to learn about and support local prairie conservation efforts by growing increasingly rare wildflowers once common on the coastal prairies of Texas and Louisiana.
Coastal prairie once blanketed much of the Houston area, including the neighborhood around Pershing Middle School but coastal prairies are now one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the U.S.
This spring, the Pershing students turned seeds and soil into 1,400 Texas coneflower plants for the Katy Prairie Conservancy (KPC). These colorful native flowers will be used to restore areas along a new publicly accessible trail on the historic Warren Ranch in western Harris County. Students and their families will be invited to help plant their coneflowers on the prairie this fall.
Conservancy staff will pick 800 of the 1,400 coneflowers that still reside at Pershing today.
The Katy Prairie Conservancy has been working since 1992 to preserve a sustainable portion of the Katy Prairie. KPC has conserved nearly 18,000 acres of land so that future generations can enjoy this part of Texas’s natural heritage.
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