PHILADELPHIA — Even though the Phillies fell far short of their goal to win the World Series in 2024, their home runs are impacting the city in a very green way. Home Runs for Trees, a 13-years-and-counting partnership between Asplundh, the Phillies organization and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS), plants one tree in the Greater
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If there’s one thing all Philadelphia’s mayoral candidates can agree on, it’s that Mayor Jim Kenney botched the water crisis that wasn’t. On the heels of a near-crisis that called into question Kenney’s emergency response and the City’s ability to protect its drinking water system, the candidates to succeed Kenney in office gathered Wednesday night
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On February 23, 2023, Philadelphia’s Department of Parks & Recreation (PPR) released the Philly Tree Plan: Growing Our Urban Forest. The product of two years of outreach and engagement that gathered input from more than 9,000 people, the plan attempts to chart a course to expand the city’s tree canopy while balancing the benefits of
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Surveyors have begun marking property lines through what some neighbors of the Cobbs Creek golf course had thought were their backyards. Deborah Harris-White, who has lived on the 7600 block of Brockton Road in the Overbrook Park neighborhood for 23 years, says that the orange spray paint and stakes with “property line” written on them
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On February 23, 2023, Philadelphia’s Department of Parks & Recreation released the Philly Tree Plan. Philadelphia’s trees help clean the air, slow stormwater runoff, soak up carbon dioxide and cool a city suffering from rising temperatures. With these and other benefits of trees in mind, in 2008 Mayor Nutter set a goal of making sure
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You may be aware that the planet is losing large mammals such as elephants, rhinos, pandas, and whales because of human actions, but insects are also facing devastating declines. While they may be unpleasant or repulsive to many, insects are what the naturalist E. O. Wilson called the “little things that run the world.” In
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Annual campaign finance reports for 2022 dropped last week, and Curtis Jones’s campaign has again benefited from contributions from people and businesses connected with the Cobbs Creek golf course development. In 2022 Grid reported on donations made to the Friends of Curtis Jones Jr., the campaign fundraising body for Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr., from people
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On Thursday Philadelphia City Council unanimously voted to pass a bill to exempt the Cobbs Creek golf course from zoning rules protecting steep slopes from logging. Those steep slope protections exist to prevent erosion and flooding caused when trees, whose roots hold soil in place, are cut down. The bill creates a special “overlay district”
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The Lower Merion School District, Lower Merion Township and Haverford Township have announced a tentative deal for the Black Rock Middle School to use the Polo Field in the Bryn Mawr section of Haverford Township for baseball and softball practice space, according to an announcement last week, likely resulting in less land clearing and construction
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In his classroom at Lankenau High School, veteran teacher Matthew VanKouwenberg points out to his students the connection between average daily temperatures across Philadelphia and tree canopies, noting that the lack of tree cover can leave some neighborhoods — often poor, often majority-minority — overheated in summer. VanKouwenberg, who teaches chemistry and environmental science at
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They came dancing, swaying and stomping — humans or ants, waterfowl, purple mushrooms, giant alligators and random salamanders? No matter. They reveled to a rhythmic beat against a backdrop of blue skies and green meadows. But when the vultures with money dripping from inside of their wings swooped in, the earthmovers followed, and the backdrop
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