Category: Land Stewardship
The REAL Flower Show: Trout Lily and White Trillium
April 13, 2021Any day now, two wonderful spring wildflowers will blossom on the floor of the Schuylkill Center’s forest, and if you love flowers, if you buy tickets to see the wonderful Philadelphia Flower Show, you really need to see these—and they are free!
The incandescent yellow turban-shaped blossoms of the trout lily are one of the most recognizable features of a Pennsylvania forest in early spring. Rising only 4-6 inches above the soil, the flower is named after the brown-gray mottling of its leaves that resembles something like a trout’s back.
The bright nodding flowers do attract pollinators, and the seeds…
Plant an Earth Day Tree
April 5, 2021Earth Day returns on Thursday, April 22, 2021, the 51st anniversary of the seminal event that changed the world by giving birth to the modern environmental movement. To commemorate the day, the Schuylkill Center invites you to join us in performing a powerful, even radical act that day:
We’d like you to plant a tree..
Because trees are critical weapons in the fight against the city’s three largest environmental issues: climate change, the loss of biological diversity, and the scourge of raging stormwater.
To cool the climate, we need more trees. Trees shade our homes and streets, mitigating the effect…
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.
Reflecting on Remembering Water’s Way: Artist Guest post
January 10, 2019By Cassie Meador, Choreographer/Executive Artistic Director of Dance Exchange
Editor’s note: The LandLab resident artists of 2017-2018 (including this Dance Exchange project along with Kate Farquhar and Jan Mun) will be featured in a gallery exhibition at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, opening with a reception on January 10, 2019. More information at: https://www.cfeva.org/events/cfeva-exhibitions/landlab2019
Over this past year, I have been working with the Schuylkill Center as part of their LandLab Residency program to address an environmental challenge through dancemaking and community participation.
On our first research walk at the center, I noticed several large bundles of sticks being…
Photographing faces in the forest
January 3, 2019
When I go for a nature walk in a local forest, I see trees, birds, flowers, deer.
Not photographer Willard Terry.
When he goes for a walk — which he does a lot — he sees faces, lots of faces, incredible faces. Gnomes, ghosts, demons, animals, dinosaurs, people, aliens, all staring at him from tree trunks, tree roots, broken branches, gnarly bark, rock walls, even fence posts and barn siding.
Amazingly, once you start looking for them, there are faces everywhere.
And Terry has been photographing them.
He just published a book, “Pareidolia: Spirits and Faces of the Wissahickon and Schuylkill Valleys,”…
Autumnal Stream Walk
November 20, 2018By Lauren Bobyock, Communications and Environmental Art Intern
It was the perfect fall day to get a little lost in the woods. There are two parallel streams running through the valleys at the Schuylkill Center — Meigs and Smith Runs — and that day two teams of staff and volunteers set out to learn more about them. On an artistic and scientific mission, we began this journey to contribute to our latest environmental art gallery exhibit by Stacy Levy: Braided Channel.
Stacy Levy is an environmental artist with installations all over the world including…
Naturalist’s Notebook: Native Plants, Harbingers of Spring
March 29, 2018
The end is near! The world? No, just the winter season. And what bears such glad tidings you wonder? Our native plant friends. In February, the Schuylkill Center staff took its monthly nature walk down Ravine Loop hunting for the first tell of spring, skunk cabbage (above). I’m happy to report that we found it on February 9th in a particularly wet area just above Smith Run where the little stone bridge crosses a semi-perennial tributary. Just barely visible was its little purplish hood, the forbearer of the true flower. The first source of pollen in late winter, skunk cabbage…
Field Guide: Post-Storm Tree Assessment
March 15, 2018By Steve Goin, Director of Land and Facilities
See other Field Guide posts here.
As Director of Land and Facilities at the Schuylkill Center, the care of our trees rests on my shoulders. With 340 mostly forested acres, our tree population is large and diverse in both species and maturity. The recent nor’easters brought heavy, wet snow and a barrage of winds, impacting our trees and in some cases causing damage. The damage is as varied as the trees themselves. Some trees barely lost a twig, others had major limbs break, and some even blew completely over, known as windthrow.…
Four Black-led Initiatives Nourishing a Greener Philadelphia
February 23, 2018Happy 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.
(more…)
Roxborough’s Toad Rage
February 15, 2018By 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…
