The Garden Club of Houston Creates Pocket Prairies at Hermann Park Conservancy

April 26, 2023

GCA Partners for Plants grant funds non-native weeding

In the Fall of 2021, the Garden Club of Houston was searching for a location for their annual “Weed Wrangle”—a one-day volunteer effort to help rescue public spaces from non-native invasive species. They discovered a perfect hands-on project when they reached out to the volunteer coordinator at Hermann Park Conservancy, a nonprofit citizens’ organization dedicated to the stewardship and improvement of Hermann Park. The park needed more “pocket prairies.”

That November, an intrepid group of Garden Club of Houston members met at Hermann Park. They received a brief overview of the original flora of the ecoregion which encompassed the central Houston area at the time of the first settlers. The HPC staff was working to re-introduce those native plants back into certain parts of the park through “pocket prairies”—relatively small areas of native plants and grasses. They encouraged club members to follow suit, saying that few people realize that they have the power to provide wildlife habitats and prevent erosion by choosing to replace their non-native flora with a “native” prairie. 

After admiring one of these existing pocket prairies at HPC, the club turned to an adjacent parcel of land and began removing invasive tree saplings and grasses as well as some very tenacious vines. Within a couple of hours, they’d made a dent and an underutilized meadow was cleared to expand the existing pocket prairie.  In 2022, The Weed Wrangle returned to Herman Park with GCA funding through their Partners for Plants grant program and a new name–Ground Control Houston!! Copy that!

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