Author: news
Summer is the season of meadows
June 26, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
To me, summer has always been the season of meadows. While in spring the light fills the forest, bringing flowers, ferns, and understory plants to life; by summer, the forest is a cool, dim respite, a darker, more peaceful place to escape the burning heat of the sun. So it is the meadow that seems to properly represent this season of blazing hot days: steaming humid afternoons, rain storms that blast out of the late afternoon and early evening to drench the world and leave things glistening and green. Meadows this time of…
Climate Change and the Two Toms
June 17, 2014By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
This piece will printed in the Roxborough Review on Thursday, June 19 in the column Natural Selections
“We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change,” Washington State Governor Jay Inslee notably says in the new TV series, Years of Living Dangerously, “and we are the last generation that can do something about it.”
Inslee gets it—climate change will be the transcendent environmental issue of the coming decades. Hard to know yet if either Governor Tom Corbett or his opponent, Democratic challenger Tom Wolf, gets it at quite this high level of…
Just how small is a toadlet?
June 9, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
Just what size are these tiny toad babies that make their way, by the thousands, from the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Preserve to the Schuylkill Center each June?
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What’s the bbuzzz?
June 6, 2014By LandLab Resident Artists Maggie Mills, B.H. Mills, and Marguerita Hagan
Colony Collapse Disorder
The LandLab installation by Marguerita Hagan, B.H. Mills, and Maggie Mills addresses colony collapse disorder and the devastating global loss of honeybees. At present in the United States alone, 1/3 of the honeybee population has been lost to this disorder. These mini, mighty pollinators make every third bite of food we take possible. Ironically, it is human behavior that is responsible for the honeybees’ catastrophic disappearance. Our installation provides a chemical free, native pollinator garden for the bee population on the grounds of the Schuylkill Center.…
Kindness Week at Nature Preschool
May 27, 2014By Shannon Dryden, Preschool Manager and Lead Teacher
When people think of school and what children learn, it’s important to remember it’s not just reading, writing and arithmetic. Particularly in preschool, building social skills is key. At the Schuylkill Center Nature Preschool, the children have demonstrated how much they have learned about kindness, cooperation, relationships, and compassion. Throughout the year, we have built a community of trust and love between children, adults, and nature. This week, we celebrated all the kind acts of our children with a kindness week. (more…)
Nature Preschool goes camping
May 22, 2014By Rebecca Dhondt, Preschool Teacher
Last week Nature Preschool went camping right in our Tall Trees Playscape. We talked about camping, read about camping, sang about camping and probably dreamed about camping on our rest mats. Activities included playing in tents, snuggling in sleeping bags, hiking, using mess kits, learning about building fires and ‘roasting’ marshmallows.
After reading a camping story, the Nature Preschoolers were excited about creating their own camping story. We took the opportunity to teach about the parts of a story: beginning, middle and end; problem and solution; and characters and setting. After brainstorming we created this…
First Day as a LandLab Resident
May 14, 2014By LandLab Resident Artist Leslie Birch
I’m Leslie Birch, and I’m very curious about Philadelphia’s water. Last Thursday, I felt a bit nervous as I headed my car down the long driveway towards the Schuylkill Center. Having looked at records online for water quality in this watershed, I’ve seen mixed reports. We are located downstream from some heavy-duty coal and energy industries and also share our waters with many manufacturing industries. What hope can there be? Well, after meeting Sean Duffy, Director of Land and Facilities, I was assured there actually is a shining star – apparently the Center has…
Four sounds from early May
May 8, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
This week the forests and fields are alive with sounds, all manner of animals calling out and leafy trees rustling in the breeze. This is also the time of year when our Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic is brimming with baby animals of all sorts. So, here are four samples of what May sounds like at the Schuylkill Center.
Toads, singing in afternoon sunlight. A basin in this field fills with water most of the year, creating a nice habitat for toads and other amphibians. Around the field and basin are vines, grasses, and flowering trees.
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Local Food Culture in Philadelphia: A look at a growing movement
April 30, 2014By Daphne Churchill, Intern and Educator
A bright sunny Saturday draws you out for a morning walk. You look up the street and see the white tents with tables of fresh products: red radishes, leafy green lettuce, freshly cut flower bouquets, free-range eggs, fresh goat cheeses, liquid amber honeys. The tables are bountiful and the tents abundant. Neighbors chat with one another as they nibble free samples and discuss their purchases. You overhear growers converse about sustainable practices and their business with the consumers as they debate and make their purchases. This typical scene of a farmer’s market has become…
Meet the LandLab Resident Artists
April 21, 2014By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art
We are thrilled to announce the four resident artist projects for our new LandLab residency program. Launching this spring, LandLab projects will create innovative, art-based installations that prevent or remediate environmental damage while raising public awareness about our local ecology.
LandLab is a unique artist residency program that operates on multiple platforms: artistic creation, ecological restoration, and education. Our residency offers resources and space on the Schuylkill Center’s property for visual artists to engage audiences in the processes of ecological stewardship through scientific investigation and artistic creation. We’re excited at SCEE to offer…
