Category: Miscellaneous
14,000 hours & counting
January 11, 2016By Claire Morgan, Volunteer Coordinator, and Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Throughout our now 50-plus years of educating thousands of people, volunteers have been central to our mission. In fact, we could have accomplished surprisingly little without volunteers. Claire Morgan, our volunteer coordinator, calculates that in the 12-month period ending July 1, volunteers poured 14,000 hours of service into the Center, planting trees, feeding baby birds, measuring water temperatures in streams, hanging gallery exhibitions, even tallying supermarket receipts for dividends.
In this season of giving, we’d like to thank our volunteers for giving us so much.
Like at the wildlife clinic.…
Schuylkill Center Old Fashioned Recipe
October 15, 2015By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
This past Saturday afternoon was idyllic: the early fall light streamed through the trees golden and green, the air was crisp, but not cold. And 130 friends of the Schuylkill Center gathered in Jubilee Grove to celebrate our 50th anniversary, wrapping up the year of special events. We dedicated Jubilee Grove and it’s new Binney Meigs sculpture, our Nature Preschoolers sang a delightful song for us (“Schuylkill Center Dream”), Judy Wicks and Maya van Rossum both read letters to 2040 (look out for their letters on the blog soon), and our education director…
50 Facts, 50 Days
August 28, 2015By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
As we wrap up celebrations for our 50th anniversary, we're posting one fact each day for the 50 days leading up to final celebratory event of the year: Jubilee in the Grove. Each week, we'll update this post with the most recently posted facts, as well as extra details. Follow all the posts on Facebook or Twitter with #50years
50 Facts, 50 Days
1. On average, our Nature Preschoolers spend 3 hours/day playing outdoors, 42 times more than the average American child.
2. In one year, the Schuylkill Center's forest absorbs 10,200,000 lbs of…
History and Nature Intertwine at The Wagner Free Institute of Science
August 13, 2015Originally written by David Hewitt on the blog Growing History; adapted by Wagner’s Cara Scharf
North Philadelphia, with its closely packed houses and shops, cracked sidewalks and streets, and vacant lots and overgrown parks, is not necessarily where you’d expect to find a historic landscape.
It’s there, however, in the yard of the Wagner Free Institute of Science. Though there are many historic plants in the yard, some of the most noticeable are the large trees such as London planes (Platanus x acerifolia) and silver maples (Acer saccharinum) that ring the yard. Their size alone suggests they have been here for…
What to do outside before summer is over
August 7, 2015By Kiley Sotomayor, Summer Environmental Art Intern
Now that we are in the final month of summer vacation, it is the perfect time to fit in something you’ve been unable to do all summer in between graduation parties, sports games, and weddings. For me, that means doing new things and spending as much time as possible outside. The Schuylkill Center is a great place to do both! I’d like to recommend three things to check off your list before August flies by:
Hit the trails. We as a country spend about 8.5 hours a day in front of the screens, usually sitting.…
Which Environmental Leader Would You Put on the $10 Bill?
July 16, 2015By Beth Crawford, Summer PR & Communications Intern
Over the past few months, social media has been inundated with a simple, but powerful hashtag: #womenon20s. The grassroots organization that launched the groundbreaking campaign, Women on 20s, created buzz for the movement by inviting the public to vote for influential female leaders in United States history. After more than 600,000 people cast their votes, Harriet Tubman was chosen as the potential face of the new $20 bill. Women on 20s petitioned President Obama to request that Jacob Lew, Secretary of the Treasury, consider a change to the $20 bill in time…
Natural Dyeing: from plant to fabric
June 30, 2015By Guest Contributors Elissa Meyers and Mira Adornetto
After pulling out green cotton fabric from a naturally fermenting indigo vat, our workshop group watches excitedly as the green transitions into a dark indigo blue. This incredible process, which occurs as the indigo dye oxidizes has been used for thousands of years in numerous places and cultures. Throughout human history, color has been applied to fibers on every continent, starting as far back as 2,600 BCE. Plants, shellfish, and insects: wildflowers, trees, mollusks and bugs, have been used to dye fibers.
Since the industrial revolution dyeing went from natural colorants like…
Making nature relevant: finding common ground
June 18, 2015By Gail Farmer, Director of Education
This April marked the 45th anniversary of Earth Day, and we have come a long way since that huge 1970 event. But clearly, we have a long way to go: a recent study by the National Environmental Education Foundation found that two-thirds of the public fails even a basic environmental quiz and a whopping 88% cannot pass a basic energy quiz. This same study found that 45 million Americans think the ocean is a source of fresh water and 130 million believe that hydropower is America’s top energy source.
Alarmingly, this environmental literacy gap…
PLAY Manayunk: The Way-Way-Back Story
May 7, 2015By Guest Contributor Melissa Andrews, Destination Schuylkill River
PLAY Manayunk is happening on Saturday, May 16 in Manayunk and celebrates outdoor recreation, fitness, and healthy living in our area. Did you know that this event is inspired by major changes to the neighborhood over multiple decades, and that Manayunk’s own canal towpath is a major character in that story?
A walk on the towpath on a beautiful day feeds the senses. All along the path, there are views of the canal and adjacent Schuylkill River, but patience and repeat visits yield more unusual sights. Turn around the bend near the…
Nature Above the City
February 25, 2015By Ezra Tischler, Public Relations/Environmental Art Intern
The sun was starting to set as we stood on the 8th floor rooftop looking at the rising towers of Center City just a few blocks to our east. A breeze swirled across the helipad, weaving through massive HVAC units, across a garden of ornamental grasses and perennial natives. It was mid-September and the low-growing succulents of the PECO Green Roof created a nice contrast with the yellow blooms of Coreopsis ‘Crème Brulee’ and the pinkish-red Gaura lindheimeri. Bees and butterflies buzzed and fluttered about the varied vegetation. It was hard to believe a city…
