Author: news
Something Special in our Nature Gift Shop
December 15, 2020There’s a special joy in giving someone just the right gift, one that makes their eyes light up with excitement. But finding that something can be tricky—so we’re here to make it easy for you. Nestled in a corner of our Visitor Center, our Nature Gift Shop is replete with eco-friendly, locally-made, and nature-themed items, from books to bird houses, earrings to mugs, puzzles to (recycled!) plushies.
FOR THE EXPLORER: The Nature Connection: An Outdoor Workbook
This family-friendly book offers numerous delightful outdoor activities, explorations, and crafts. It’s great for injecting new life into tired pandemic routines (has anyone else…
TreeVitalizing Our Forests
October 10, 2020By Drew Rinaldi Subits, Land Stewardship Coordinator
You may have recently noticed a large clearing across the trail from Pine Grove, which has been steadily cleared and then mowed and maintained throughout the Spring and Summer months. If you have been there more recently, you may have noticed fencing and a young grove of trees and shrubs.
This newest planting effort was possible through the collaboration of our Land and Facilities team, a state-funded tree planting grant initiative from TreeVitalize, and a RJ Carbone, a local young man looking to complete his Eagle Scout project.
For the past five years,…
Natural Selections: Manayunk and Manatawna: Our Lenape Place Names
March 5, 2020By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
One of the pleasures of teaching and talking about our Roxborough land are our historic place names, so many of them Lenape in origin: Wissahickon, Conshohocken, Manatawna, Cinnaminson, Manayunk. Widen the lens a bit, and Philadelphia maps burst with Lenape words: Shackamaxon, Wingohocking, Kingsessing, Tulpehocken, Tioga.
Sadly, Phildelphians are taught too little, if anything, about the Lenape, the original people here, our First People, and too much that is taught is at best misleading and too often wrong. That statue of a Lenape chief that guards a bluff above the Wissahickon? He is carelessly outfitted…
Year of Action: Join us in Taking Action
January 31, 2020By Mike Weilbacher
The New Year 2020 promises to be pivotal on a number of fronts, but especially the environment. The increasing urgency of the climate crisis has sparked higher levels of activism by new, youth-led groups like the Sunrise Movement. Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg’s lonely 2018 climates strike in front of the Swedish parliament have blossomed into climate strikes of millions of kids skipping school across the world.
The presidential election near the year's end promises to be not only loud, but will have an out sized impact on environmental policy, with major implications for how America, and thus…
Natural Selections: New Year’s resolutions from the Roxborough community
January 28, 2020By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
[pullquote]2020 will see my continued fight for redistricting reform and to continue to work in a bipartisan manner to get good policy in place.” State Rep. Pamela A. DeLissio, D-194[/pullquote]With the calendar pages turning over to a new year – and a new decade to boot – it’s time for our annual roundup of New Year’s resolutions from community leaders across Roxborough.
Celeste Hardeseter, president of the Central Roxborough Civic Association, said that, “A century and more ago, people planted trees in their yards that, 100 years later, became magnificent mature specimens. Now, as these are becoming…
Nature Preschool meets our pileated woodpecker
December 26, 2019By Leigh Ashbrook
Editor’s note: one of the largest-- and rarest-- birds in the Schuylkill Center forest is the pileated woodpecker, our largest woodpecker with a wood chipper for a beak. We’ve seen them here this winter, and Nature Preschool has become enchanted by them. One of our teachers, Leigh Ashbrook, also a great birder, teaches about birds in the school, and writes about her students meeting them recently.
Photo: Chris Petrak
Sixteen Nature Preschoolers are meandering along the Widener Trail toward the bird blind, flanked by trees of the second growth forest. Out of the woods on their left…
ExtremeTerrain makes gift to Schuylkill Center
December 5, 2019ExtremeTerrain's Clean Trail Initiative program was launched in 2015. This program seeks to reward local clubs and organizations with small, project-specific, grants to be used for trail maintenance and restoration. In the approximately 4 years since it started, the program has given out $21,650 in trail project grant funds. The Schuylkill Center is very grateful to ExtremTerrain for their support. Click here to learn more about their initiative.
Helping an injured bird
October 29, 2019By Rebecca Michelin, Director of Wildlife Rehabilitation
You may have heard the devastating news- a study published this month in the journal Science reports that the total breeding bird population in the continental U.S. and Canada has dropped by 29 percent since 1970.
While there are numerous factors contributing to this decline, human-made alterations to the landscape have certainly played a significant role, and we see the results of this clearly at the Wildlife Clinic at the Schuylkill Center. Since mid-August, the wildlife clinic has treated nearly two dozen birds, from mourning doves and woodpeckers to warblers and vireos, all…
LandLab Dream Journal
October 3, 2019LandLab Dream Journal
Guest post by LandLab Artist Kate Farquhar
Editor’s Note: LandLab is the Schuylkill Center’s environmental art residency program. Kate Farquhar was named a resident artist in 2017 and recently wrapped up her project, titled Synestates. She installed a series of three sculptures on the Schuylkill Center’s trails - come visit us to see them. This blog post is Kate’s reflection on time at the Schuylkill Center and a peek into her creative process.
I'm currently wrapping up my LandLab residency at the Schuylkill Center: a chapter in my relationship to a place that I will…
Kate Farquhar’s Synestates: Art, Nature, and Humans
August 15, 2019by Communications Intern Charlotte Roach
As you wander the trails of the Schuylkill Center, you may notice some objects that look a little out-of-place. What are those chains doing hanging from those tree branches? What are those white geometric shapes on the surface of Wind Dance Pond? Those objects are art installations, part of our LandLab environmental art residency, created by resident artist Kate Farquhar. Kate is a Philadelphia-based environmental artist and landscape architect with a passion for green design. Her series is called Synestates, and its purpose it to explore how human-made building materials can interact with nature.
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