Summer is the time to explore the unique prairie ecosystem at Jennings Environmental Education Center and what better time of day than the evening!  Attend all three walks to witness the prairie blooms change through the season. 

Walks will be held on Tuesday, July 23, Thursday, August 15, and September 12 from 6:00 - 7:30 PM. These guided 90-minute casual walks will focus on the plants currently blooming but will also highlight some of the animals, history and geology of the prairie. 

Please meet park staff at the Prairie Side Parking Lot. This is a free experience and no registration required. Binoculars will be available to borrow on a first-come-first-served basis. 

The small prairie at the Jennings Center is one of the few remaining pockets of a once greater extension of the true Midwestern prairie.  A combination of the glacial history of the area and climatic changes that took place over the last million years allowed the Midwestern prairie plant community to extend into Pennsylvania about 2000 BC.   

The Jennings area was established in the late 1950’s to protect and conserve a beautiful prairie flower, the blazing star.  It was the first reserve established in Pennsylvania to protect an individual plant species and remains the only public and protected prairie in the Commonwealth.  The hot midsummer weather will bring the spectacular blazing star and other prairie flowers to peak bloom during late July and early August.