Happy Black History Month! This February, we’ve been honoring Black leaders in the environmental movement.
Here are four of the many Philadelphia-based environmental initiatives led by Black educators, healers, scientists and activists you can support not just this month, but all year round.
By Claire Morgan, Volunteer Coordinator & Administrative Assistant
It’s early spring, just around sunset, and the conditions are just right—55 degrees and humid. A high-pitched trilling rings out in the distance. The shallow water of the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Preserve stirs with excitement. The toads of Roxborough are ready to run—and ready to attract a mate.
On some evenings, as many as two hundred toads can be seen heading from the Schuylkill Center’s forest to the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Preserve in a period of just two hours. The steady stream of traffic at the intersection of Hagy’s Mill Road and Port Royal Avenue (that separates the forest from the preserve) presents a huge obstacle to the toads as they cross the road in preparation for their springtime mating ritual. Continue reading
By Andrew Kirkpatrick, Manager of Land Stewardship
An excerpt from this piece was published in our winter newsletter in December 2018.
Now that leaves are falling, the giants are revealing themselves in the forest. No, not the fairy tale variety—the trees. Walking the Schuylkill Center’s trails in the summer months, they remain mostly hidden from view. They’re tucked away from sight, obscured by cork trees, devil’s walking stick, and their own young. But once the crisp fall days arrive, the giants appear. Continue reading
By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art and Liz Jelsomine, Exhibitions Coordinator
Editor’s note: The Schuylkill Center produced a wall calendar for 2017 in celebration of the environmental art program. Throughout the year, we’ll run a monthly post on our blog highlighting the art works featured in that month of the calendar.
Rain Yard is an interactive artwork by Stacy Levy that has been on display in the Schuylkill Center’s Sensory Garden since October 2013. Rain Yard provides a function of mitigating stormwater runoff from our building, while highlighting the critical role soil and plants play in the water cycle. Its open steel platform allows rain to filter down, plants to grow up, and people to hover somewhere in between. Continue reading
By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art and Liz Jelsomine, Exhibitions Coordinator
Editor’s note: The Schuylkill Center produced a wall calendar for 2017 in celebration of the environmental art program. Throughout the year, we’ll run a monthly post on our blog highlighting the art works featured in that month of the calendar.
“I imagine a line in space. I build it straight and true and offer it to the wind.
The wind plays with it like a cat with a length of yarn. The wind is the artist.”
Yellow Zinger, Tim Prentice
Tim Prentice’s Yellow Zinger was part of an outdoor exhibition at The Schuylkill Center in 2010 called Elemental Energy: Art Powered by Nature.
Elemental Energy brought six artists/teams from around the country to present outdoor sculptural installations that engaged a natural element – wind, water, sun – to create a dynamic or kinetic artwork. Each piece created sound, movement, or both, using only the energy they harness from nature. Continue reading
By Andrew Kirkpatrick, Manager of Land Stewardship
If you take a walk along Smith Run, coming up Ravine Loop below Penn’s Native Acres, the hillsides where the beeches, oaks and maples grow show signs of distress. The structural roots of the trees are visible at the soil line when they should be tucked away cozily wrapped in the warm blanket of leaf litter and organic rich soil. Instead, because of exotic invasive earthworms, which can be observed by scraping away the thin layer of leaves on the ground, the roots are exposed and left to fend for themselves in all of the elements; freezing winter winds, driving rains, and blazing sun. If you look up, the impact on the trees is apparent. Bare branches and diminished canopy reveal their stresses. The trees are dying.
In healthy, undisturbed forest soil, we would discover a universe of fungus, microorganisms, bacteria, and insects thriving. All of these elements facilitate the healthy growth and development of plant roots. The vast root mat matrix of the organic horizon (the top layer of healthy soil) in the forest acts like a gigantic sponge that collects water when it rains and holds it in storage for trees to use in the drier months of the year.
However, in highly disturbed areas like the Schuylkill Center, the organic horizon of the soil is absent. Soil horizon is a technical term for the classification of the cake-like layers of soil. The organic horizon is missing here because hundreds of years of agricultural use have long since removed the original rich soil and left mostly thin, mineral soil at the top of the profile. In fact, parts of our property were in farmland almost until the Center’s founding in 1965. The forest has not been able to redevelop the O horizon as it might have otherwise, largely due to the activity of invasive earthworms.
photo by Julia Aguilar
Invasive earthworm and castings
The invasive earthworms are much larger than our native ones, tunnel deeper into the earth and voraciously devour the leaf litter that would accumulate annually in the fall, break down over time to replenish the soil, and rebuild the O horizon. So what is left is a loose accumulation of worm castings on a destabilized base that washes away into our streams every time it rains, carrying many nutrients with them. And when the dry times of the year arrive, the trees have no reserve of nutrients to draw upon. Instead our forest is stressed and vulnerable to attack from pests and diseases that it would otherwise be able to fend off.
We can address these problems by improving the soil and providing the roots of trees with a healthy environment to grow and develop. In our Fox Glen restoration site, as we planted new trees we covered the ground around them with wood chips to help the roots retain moisture. The wood chips will break down over time and add to the organic content of the soil.
If we want our forest at the Schuylkill Center to survive climate change and the increasing stresses that come from an urban environment, we must help it to be as resilient as possible by replacing the missing sponge.
About the author
Andrew has a master’s degree in landscape architecture and ecological restoration from Temple University. He hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in 2005-2006.
Photo by Heather Fowler, WHYY
An excerpt from this piece was published in our summer newsletter in June 2017.
By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Where our Grey Fox Loop and Wind Dance Pond Trail meet, just uphill from our beloved 19th-century springhouse and its pond, is a section of our forest that has been overrun with invasive plants. But on May 20 we’re turning it around, planting over 200 new trees and shrubs to stabilize the land and reforest the area. We’re calling it Fox Glen.
I hope you’ll transform it with us. Continue reading
By Nicole Brin, Sycamore Classroom Lead Teacher
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published by Pennsylvania Land Trust Association for their series on conserved lands, like the Schuylkill Center, in communities around the state.
Rows of stuffed animals- bears, bunnies, dogs, lions- all lined up in the grass of my suburban Connecticut backyard as they got ready to start their school day. Their teacher, eight-year-old me, prepared to teach them all the things that I already knew in the wisdom of my few childhood years. I made attendance sheets, created lesson, and planned field trips to the garden behind our shed. I knew that one day I’d be a real teacher, sharing all the cool things I loved about life. Continue reading
By Catalina Lassen, Art + PR Intern
As spring bounds in again, another year has come and gone, and almost a year has passed since our LandLab artists in residence installed a variety of exciting environmentally minded artworks last April. This cycle of a year signifies not only an anniversary, but is also a reminder of the changes that have occurred during the time in-between. As far as the art of LandLab goes, the works have been activated by nature, shifting as the seasons do. Back in November we took a look at the progress of one of these installations, but it’s now time to turn our attention to Interwoven, a project created by artist-botanist duo WE THE WEEDS. Woven from invasive vines, this installation is an exploration of invasive plants, examining the history, perception, and impact of such species on local environments, while working to remove and recycle this flora. As the year has passed, there has been exciting movement among Interwoven, as the natural cycles of the earth activate the framework of this large sculptural work.
(Before Photographs): If you’re interested in more discussion of this project, or of the ecological and cultural roles of native and non-native plants, please join us on April 14th for a Botanical Cocktail Hour with artist Zya S. Levy.
By Melissa Nase, Manager of Land Stewardship
Every garden reflects the individuality and personal taste of its gardener. Reasons for choosing specific plants can range from aesthetic values like color, texture, and shape to practical considerations such as space limitations, attracting specific pollinators, or even what was available at the local garden center. Some gardeners prefer well-behaved plants, and maintain exceptional order while others prefer a more natural look, or even, shall we say, slightly unruly. And there will be no judgments here! There is a place for all these styles to coexist, in the name of happiness, beauty, biodiversity, and ecosystem health.
This year, for Schuylkill Center members, we’re offering pre-orders for our Spring Native Plant Sale, so you can start planning your garden now and pick up your plants in the spring. For our Plant Sale Pre-Order, we’ve put together a list of our favorite native plants, with numerous options for any style of garden.
My gardening theory is that the least amount of mulch you can see, the better. Accordingly, we’ve included a couple groundcovers to replace that non-native vinca and pachysandra. Tiarella cordifolia ‘Running Tapestry’, foamflower, is a vigorous runner, spreading quickly to form a mat of heart shaped, mottled leaves. It sends up creamy white flowering spikes throughout the spring and provides ample cover for wildlife. If you have deeper shade, partridgeberry (Mitchella repens), is one to consider. Partridgeberry is understated and delicate with small evergreen leaves, and bright red berries that persist through winter.
In the shrub layer, sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina) is a great option. With its 2-4’ stature, sweet fern is the right height for planting along the foundation or incorporating with other perennial wildflowers. The fern-like leaves are aromatic when crushed, and perhaps more importantly, deer resistant.
Not many of us have room for large canopy trees in our yards. Instead, smaller understory trees can fill the void. Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) is the generalist among native understory trees, serving a broad range of ecological functions. It grows under a wide variety of sun, moisture, and soil conditions, even adapting well to clay soils. In late summer, the berries provide food for all types of wildlife including birds, and both large and small mammals, not to mention acting as larval host for a variety of Lepidoptera.
Take a look at this list and order form for the Plant Sale Pre-Order and feel free to inquire with any further questions. Plant Sale Pre-Orders will be accepted through Friday, April 1. In addition to these selections, our full offering of native plants will be available at our annual Spring Native Plant Sale during the last weekend in April.
