On yet another wet weekend, a group of ten braced a downpour to walk along the trails of Strawberry Mansion’s Discovery Center for a wild plant tour. Their journey began at the trail entrance, where an innocuous weed was growing. Tour guide Lady Danni Morinich, a local herbalist and forager, identified the plant as yellow
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Nic Esposito wants to reimagine the retail industry; he believes that people, profits and the planet would benefit from leaving business as usual behind. That’s where Circa Systems comes in. Esposito founded the Philadelphia-based company in 2023 to create a more sustainable, local retail model, allowing paying members to purchase and swap mostly used products
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Antonette Russell’s house, like many others in Grays Ferry and neighborhoods across the city, has been in her family for decades. Her grandmother, community leader Irene Russell, was the first in the family to own the century-old, two-story brick row house on South Napa Street. The matriarch famously worked to improve nearby Stinger Square Park,
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This story was originally published in Hidden City Philadelphia. Last fall, after Philadelphia announced the release of a request for proposal to develop one of the most notoriously blighted areas of the city, the Logan Triangle, a bevy of reporters called up Charlene Samuels, chairperson for the Logan Civic Association, to get community perspective. With
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After three years of planning and several unexpected delays, Weavers Way Co-op celebrated the opening of their new Germantown location with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday. “I’ve been crying for two days, tears of joy,” says Jon Roesser, General Manager of Weavers Way. “It’s amazing the way the community has been so welcoming to us.
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In the early hours of September 17, 2023, Mazzie Casher and Steven Pickens were foot patrolling near A Street and Indiana Avenue in Kensington, a hotspot for gun murders. The co-founders of the Philly Truce Foundation, a nonprofit that tackles gun violence among the city’s Black youth, were accompanied by a Philadelphia police officer and
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There’s a buzz around the new native plant habitats at Wharton Square Park in Point Breeze, and it’s spread all the way to Harrisburg. On April 30, the Friends of Wharton Square Park, in partnership with the Penn State Extension Master Watershed Stewards of Philadelphia County, received the Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence for the
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Amani Lee, a senior at The U School, hadn’t given gardening much thought until this year. As part of her school’s horticultural program, she’s now researching crops in Ukraine, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. She is learning what the people in these countries grow and eat, and the stories behind their famous dishes. Under
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Gardening was woven into Victor Young’s life at an early age. His mother and aunt introduced him to the concept of growing your own food as he helped them in their gardens as a kid. The West Philly resident tried to carry these lessons into adulthood — but not without hitting some obstacles. “I was
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Most mornings, Victoria Miles-Chambliss walks down the street from her home in Kingsessing to the Cecil Street Community Garden to drink a cup of coffee. Among the newly-planted native trees and echinacea plants, she sees something that was once a rare sight in her neighborhood: birds. “Our block has really changed since we put in
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From April 26 to April 29, Philadelphia and its adjacent counties will be competing against cities around the world to recruit the greatest number of people to find the most species in their regions. Using the iNaturalist app as a tool, the City Nature Challenge encourages us to explore and document the biodiversity right where
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