St. Mary's Episcopal Church

Celebrating God's love found in people and prairie!

 

Prairie

Project

The Nash Prairie is an on-going project that involves the Nash Prairie, located on the KNG Ranch in West Columbia, and the Prairie Prayer Garden located on the church’s property. Historically, Columbia (later divided into East and West Columbia) was described as a town surrounded by prairie. 

 St. Mary’s receives partial funding from the KNG Ranch.  (For more information about the KNG Ranch, click here) This ranch contains 300 acres of pristine coastal prairie, probably the largest remaining remnant of this rare plant community on the upper Texas coast.  Currently, a botanist is doing a three year study of the prairie. So far, almost 300 plant species have been identified, with 14 being considered rare, and one thought to have been extinct in Texas!  The prairie also has significance since it is not far from where Santa Anna was kept prisoner after his capture at the Battle of San Jacinto.  While captive, famous Texans visited with him, traversing in the Nash Prairie.  Tours of the prairie are conducted frequently.  Contact the church office for scheduling, since the Nash Prairie remains private property.  To find out more about the prairie, please go to related links.

In 2004, the Bishop Quinn Foundation of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas gave $5000.00 to create a Prairie Prayer Garden.  Along with it, donations from parishioners, and using seeds and grasses from the Nash Prairie, a garden was begun.  This garden is located between the church and the Parish Hall.   It is an outdoor worship space, as well as an educational tool for the community.  You are welcomed at any time to pray and learn about God’s creation as found originally in our Brazoria County Community.

Of course, this prairie project would not occur without the gift of the late, Kitty Nash Groce (of which the KNG is named.)  To learn more about “Miss Kitty”  see our history page. 

To contact us:

16th. & Clay Sts.

P. O. Box 786

Phone: 979-345-3456

Fax: 979-345-5503

E-mail: stmarys@hal-pc.org

 

“After passing through the forest, I had my first view

of a Texas prairie.  An unbroken, level, grassy plain extended for miles before us, on which a few islands of trees and shrubs were scattered in irregular order.”

           Dr. Ferdinand Roemer

(German geologist-explorer),

somewhere  near Houston Texas,

Jan. 1846;  From Roemer’s Texas