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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This year, the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) celebrated 10 years of Green City, Clean Waters (GCCW), a 25-year plan that seeks to improve water quality in our creeks and rivers by using rain gardens, tree plantings and other green stormwater infrastructure to soak up stormwater. Sixty percent of our city is served by an old
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In early November Troy Bynum bagged his first deer and shared a photo of it on social media. Bynum, a tech worker from Mount Airy who is also a wildlife photographer, shot it with a crossbow as part of the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum’s Mentored Archery Deer Hunt. “A lot of people
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Tapeta Mayson, Philadelphia’s 2020-2021 poet laureate, knows that residents of Germantown can have mixed feelings about water. The area is susceptible to flooding during heavy rains and the loss and displacement that sometimes comes as a result. A native of Liberia who grew up in North Philly and Germantown, Mayson—in addition to being a poet—is
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On a cold February morning, a new birding group huddled up at the John James Audubon Center in Audubon, Montgomery County. Though there’s nothing remarkable about birders getting together at the museum, the former home of America’s most famous birder, what was remarkable was what they were celebrating—the launch of a more accessible kind of
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On a walk along Cobbs Creek in West Philadelphia I inspected some old ruins. On the opposite side of the creek I could see the tall earth bank interrupted by a stone block wall, covered in some parts by crumbling concrete. I walked to the water and found I was standing on a matching surface.
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When my editor asked if I’d like to write a foraging article, I said I’d think about it. I have avoided writing about foraging for a while now. Foraging—looking for wild plants and fungi to consume—seems to be growing as a hobby, and it’s an obvious topic for a nature writer. But it has always
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Calvin Keeys didn’t see many people like him working in conservation. “Growing up I didn’t have a lot of Black naturalists to look up to,” Keeys says. When his father brought home information about MobilizeGreen, an internship program at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum that connects young BIPOC people with careers in
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Emily Rector had grown accustomed to walking by litter on Philadelphia’s streets. The South Philly resident had spent years wishing for a practical solution to the city’s trash problem. So when she saw on Instagram that Terrill Haigler, aka “Ya Fav Trashman,” was involved with launching an app to address the problem, Rector was excited.
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Elise Greenberg wasn’t expecting many people at the Philly Queer Birders’ first meetup at The Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia this past April. “I honestly expected two to four people to show up,” she recalls. Greenberg had launched the Philly Queer Birders as an Instagram account just a few weeks earlier, seeking community in her
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When the remnants of Hurricane Ida arrived in the Philadelphia region last month, it brought with it the kinds of chaos we used to just hear about: flooding, property destruction, mudslides and at least one dude back flipping into the sewage pit formerly known as I-676 in Center City. “I definitely thought about the water
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