Maybe it’s to grow fresh fruits and veggies that taste better than what you can buy at the grocery store. Maybe it’s for the satisfaction of seeing seeds you plant grow into something magnificent over months or even years of care. Maybe it’s to lay out a verdant and beautiful welcome mat to your neighbors.
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On October 11, 2021, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a worker in an excavator arrived at the Sedgley Woods disc golf course and began clearing a road along the boundary with the Strawberry Green driving range next door. “On the first day of the destruction I happened to be on my lunch break in my car at
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Anti-gentrification activists including Protect Squirrel Hill and West Philly United Neighbors are celebrating a victory in the zoning process for a proposed 76-unit apartment building at 48th and Chester, in the Cedar Park neighborhood. The land is currently zoned for duplexes, so the apartment building requires special approval by the City’s Zoning Board of Adjustment
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Want to get involved with advocacy around the Cobbs Creek Golf Course development? Two opportunities are coming up this month: First, the Cobbs Creek Foundation, which is the nonprofit developing the golf courses, is holding a town hall Zoom meeting on May 18 at 7 p.m..: The Cobbs Creek Foundation (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization), would
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As a publication committed to a healthy, sustainable, and just city, I am extremely disappointed in Grid’s April coverage calling for the resignation of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell. Like many Philadelphians, I expect Grid to do tough, but fair, reporting on environmental issues and public works projects. However, your recent op-ed
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From April 29 to May 2 Philadelphia will take part in the City Nature Challenge, an international urban bioblitz in which hundreds of cities around the globe will try to get as many people making as many observations of as many species as possible. Anyone using the citizen science platform iNaturalist to observe plants, animals,
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The City of Philadelphia is not serious about climate change. Yet many people who work for the city are incredibly serious about it. They are dedicated, talented and passionate civil servants. Leadership, on the other hand, is lacking. The result is a mishmash of positive programs trying to methodically tackle the challenges we face colliding
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Over the last decade I have searched abandoned riverfront properties for skinks and black rat snakes, spooking deer and watching warblers, as I climbed over riprap shorelines and picked my way across the rotting timbers of overgrown piers. A city in decay offers the naturalist unlimited opportunities, while a city on the rise takes them
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The challenges of climate change can seem overwhelming, but the city can take clear steps to protect the most vulnerable renters and homeowners while enforcing existing development standards. To do this, we need to look inside and outside of the home. When construction or demolition is taking place, dangerous substances like asbestos and lead can
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On January 3, 2022, the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) told the Union League of Philadelphia that it had to wait to cut down 43 large, native trees at its golf club at Torresdale. The private member’s only club had sought to clear the trees in order to expand their golf course and
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The sun shone bright on a landscape cross-hatched with felled trees on a walking tour of the Cobbs Creek Golf Course on April 4. The Cobbs Creek Restoration and Community Foundation, the organization overseeing the revamping of the golf course, had the trees cut down, said Dana Henry, the tour guide and a spokesperson with
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