Grid Magazine April 2024 [#179]

■ Invasive earthworms destroy our forest floor p. 4

■ What will it take to fix the flooding in Northwest Philly? p. 6

■ A circular solution to recycling glass p. 20

Essential Workers

Where to appreciate (and how to cultivate!) the native ecosystems we rely upon

A community market passionate about sustainable agriculture and supporting the next generation of farmers.

Heat waves, flooding, species extinction.

Such big challenges can feel overwhelming. But, while no one can do everything, everyone can do something.

That’s why Natural Lands has spent the last 70 years working to save our region’s open space. Open space that absorbs floodwaters, cools temperatures, and provides habitat to wildlife.

You can stand with the land and side with the outside at natlands.org/support .

land for life. nature for all.

Binky Lee Preserve Chester Springs, PA | 112 acres

Photo by Randy Richard

publisher

Alex Mulcahy

managing editor

Bernard Brown

associate editor & distribution

Timothy Mulcahy

tim@gridphilly.com

deputy editor

Katherine Rapin

art director

Michael Wohlberg

writers

Bernard Brown

Siani Colón

Anthony Wayne Croasdale

Kenneth D. Frank

Zane Irwin

Dawn Kane

Emily Kovach

Carla Robinson

Bryan Satalino

Jordan Teicher

photographers

Chris Baker Evens

Matthew Bender

Zane Irwin

Jordan Teicher

Solmaira Valerio

illustrator

Bryan Satalino

published by

Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850

GRIDPHILLY.COM

What Lies Beneath?

In mid-february, Grid requested an interview with Carlton Williams, the newly announced head of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s flagship “Clean and Green” initiative. After receiving no reply, we repeated the request a few weeks later. This time a communications official acknowledged the email, but that’s it so far.

Fortunately, we’ve got other source material to examine: the Mayor ’s five-year plan for the City

Clean and Green seems to be focused on waste disposal and cleaning up highly-visible commercial corridors. (Oddly it does not deal with the parks, where most of the City-run “green” is, or with the most important “clean” assets of air and water.) A promising sign is that Clean and Green oversees the sanitation side of the Department of Streets; splitting transportation and sanitation from their current awkward union under Streets could allow both sides to operate more effectively.

Clean and Green promises to work across departments to better deal with waste and litter. Grid readers might notice that this sounds similar to the stated mission of the Zero Waste and Litter Cabinet that, in spite of promising results, was disbanded by the Kenney Administration at the start of the pandemic. Hopefully this time the culture of coordination will stick.

Illegal trash dumping plagues Philadelphia, as we have covered in these pages, and the new administration plans to add more cleanup teams and hire additional sanitation inspectors to check that businesses and residents are properly handling and disposing of their waste: more good news.

What is missing, though, are any solutions for the waste system’s shortcomings that lead contractors and small-scale waste haulers to illegally dump their loads into vacant lots and parks. Grid has covered solutions to some of these problems, such as Circular Philadelphia’s suggestion to take in smaller, commercial trash loads at the City’s Sanitation Convenience Centers. Residents would be spared a lot of dumping, and the City could save a lot of the resources that go into cleaning it up, if

more waste ended up in official dumps.

Clean and Green will give $130 million in operating funds over five years to Mayor Parker’s beloved “Taking Care of Business” Program, which focuses on cleaning up commercial corridors. It is troubling that this money will be routed from the Department of Commerce to community groups via district City Councilmembers. Those community groups in turn will hire contractors to do the cleaning. Why not just use all that money to hire more sanitation workers? There are a few answers, none of them savory.

For one, politicians love initiatives they can claim as their own, even at the expense of not maintaining the necessary but unsexy basic machinery of government that residents routinely rely on (such as Sanitation Convenience Centers or L&I inspectors).

The other answers have more to do with currying favor with City Councilmembers.

It is much more difficult to follow the money and provide effective oversight when small community groups handle funds rather than a City department. The City’s civil service system has many flaws that demand attention but they are side effects of a structure designed to avoid cronyism. Going around the civil service makes it easier to pay favors and hire staff based on connections rather than qualifications.

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, do our elected officials even want a government that serves Philadelphians? If there were no dumped trash, that would be one less reason to call your district councilmember.

And a city with fully-functioning sanitation and L&I departments would not need special initiatives like Taking Care of Business at all.

Maybe someday we’ll be able to talk to someone from the administration about it.

Jumping Toward Destruction

Invasive earthworms threaten forests and gardens, and mitigation has proven difficult by kenneth d. frank

Earthworms can be a gardener’s friend. They can transport nutrients from the soil surface to layers deep underground where roots can access them. Their burrows are passageways for water and air. By aerating soil and mixing nutrients, most species of earthworms support cultivated plants.

In forests, however, where lingering leaf litter is critical to forest health, earthworms are disruptive. Plant life in forests in Wissahickon Valley Park, Pennypack Park, Haddington Woods and other woodland in Philadelphia depend on the dead leaves that fall every autumn. Leaf litter replenishes humus and soil as it slowly decays. It provides substrate for seeds to germinate, releases nutrients, holds moisture, shelters seedlings and impedes erosion.

Anything that destroys leaf litter degrades these services. Vehicular and pedestrian traffic on the forest floor crushes it, but the most pervasive destroyers reside within the leaf litter itself and the soil beneath it: non-native earthworms.

Non-native earthworms in forests today accelerate the breakdown of leaf litter, thinning that critical layer of the forest floor and altering the release of nutrients. There are 23 documented species of earthworms in Philadelphia. More than three quarters of them are not native to North America; most are native to Europe.

Their introduction likely followed many routes, starting with the first European colonists. Earthworms and their cocoons (containing eggs) can be transported in soil, mulch, compost, potting mixes, firewood and by water flowing over land. Cocoons may hitchhike on footwear, tools and vehicles and in leaves bagged for recycling. Other potential modes of importation and dissemination include local and international trade in worms for fishing bait; sale and swapping of plants in soil; and vermicomposting.

The most disruptive non-native earthworms are three species of jumping worm, also known as snake worms and crazy worms (named for how they violently thrash around when disturbed). They are native to Japan and South Korea and are parthenogenetic, meaning they reproduce without mating. They have been recorded in 29 states in the

Invasive jumping worms eat through leaf litter, leaving behind granular castings (poop).

U.S., mostly in the eastern half of the country. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has classified one (Amynthas agrestis) as an invasive species of concern in the state.

In Philadelphia, jumping worms likely arrived in soil accompanying plants shipped from Asia. Andorra Nursery, founded in Philadelphia in 1886, was one of many nurseries that could have unintentionally imported jumping worms. In 1907, its catalog featured six kinds of Japanese trees and shrubs. One hundred acres of the former nursery are now part of Wissahickon Valley Park. Three species of jumping worm were identified in the Wissahickon Valley more than 60 years ago. Currently, photos posted on iNaturalist org show jumping worms in Northwest Philadelphia, which includes Wissahickon Valley Park.

Similar nurseries have brought other critters into the country. The former Thomas Meehan Nursery, founded in 1854, was located in Germantown and Mount Airy. Its catalog in 1898 offered more than 30 named species and varieties of Japanese trees and shrubs. Around this time or before, it inadvertently imported into North America the Chinese praying mantis, which is native to Japan as well as China and other countries in Asia. This insect is now common in Philadelphia and much of the U.S.

Compared to native and other non-native earthworms, jumping worms concentrate more in leaf litter, particularly in moist conditions. Reaching high population densities, they can completely strip leaf litter from a section of forest and cover the denuded ground with their fecal casts (excrement), which can look like coffee grounds or ground meat and are easily washed away by rainwater. The worms’ fecal casts also make the soil more basic, which makes it harder for native forest plants, adapted to acidic conditions, to grow. The jumping worms can also degrade gardens by eating through mulch and exposing roots of young plants.

The history of earthworms in our region puts the disruption caused by these non-native worms into perspective. During the last ice age, permafrost enveloped the region that now includes Philadelphia and killed all native earthworms. After permafrost thawed and forests reappeared, fungi and bacteria broke down the leaves that fell every year. The slow speed of decomposition gave leaf litter time to build up and gradually release nutrients into the soil.

There are 23 documented species of earthworms in Philadelphia. More than three quarters of them are not native to North America.

Twenty years ago, researchers at Philadelphia University (now Thomas Jefferson University) and the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education described how jumping worms transformed the forest floor in a study site at the center. The density of jumping worms averaged 75 individuals per square yard. By early summer each year, the worms had consumed all the leaf litter from the previous autumn and had left the topmost layer of soil, consisting of their casts, bare and exposed. Most of the plants growing on the surface were the invasive Japanese stiltgrass.

Jumping worms are probably here to stay. Predators such as birds, centipedes, flatworms, salamanders and snakes have not eliminated them. In the laboratory, heat of 104 degrees Fahrenheit or higher for at least 72 hours killed jumping worm eggs. Controlled forest fires have reduced but not eliminated viable eggs.

The effects of environmental change and climate warming on jumping worms are difficult to predict. The worms die with the first frost and the species overwinter in the egg stage in cocoons. Overwintering cocoons hatch after temperatures reach 50 degrees or more and the new generation of worms dies if temperatures then drop to 41 degrees or lower. Climate warming that

advances the seasonal time of hatching and improves survival of hatchlings theoretically could increase abundance of jumping worms. By contrast, climate warming that increases mortality of adult worms, which are vulnerable to hot and dry conditions, could decrease their abundance.

Over time, evolution, adaptation and immigration of ecological enemies — including predators, parasites and pathogens — of jumping worms in Philadelphia might moderate their abundance. In the last century in Philadelphia, such enemies helped control an outbreak of the Japanese beetle, a pest that the Henry A. Dreer Nursery in South Jersey inadvertently imported in soil mixed with plants (likely Japanese iris) from Japan.

Policy recommendations focus on slowing the worms’ spread and reducing their impact where they have become established. Precaution in management of soil, mulch and compost may slow their spread. Planting native trees and shrubs in forests may replace those that jumping worms have suppressed. Mapping forest floor stripped of leaf litter and covered with granular casts could guide efforts at remediation.

Jumping worms are unlikely to disappear any time soon. We can work to slow their spread, but we may have to learn to live with them.

Waiting Game

Fixing the chronic flooding in Northwest Philadelphia will be a major undertaking. In the meantime, residents live with the danger and expense

by carla robinson

Rev. chester williams has been dealing with floods in his basement since the fall of 1969, when he returned from service in Vietnam and bought his house in Germantown. Chronic flooding and sewer backups have been a fact of life for him and many of his neighbors ever since — and it’s getting worse.

The water itself is whimsical, he says. His home on the 6200 block of Chew Avenue can flood whether rains are heavy or light, and can reach as high as the basement ceiling. But the crumbling plaster, damp air and constant odor of mildew it leaves behind are all too predictable.

“I always tell people not to leave anything in their basement, or if they do, to make sure it’s in a waterproof container,”

he says. “I know too many people who’ve lost so much — expensive equipment, yes, but also family photos and mementos that you can’t replace.”

East Mount Airy Neighbors president Linda Bell hears many similar complaints. And while she lives on higher ground, and not in the chronic flood zone, she knows firsthand what it can be like. When her own sewage line backed up into her basement in January 2023, the bill for cleaning up the moldy mess came to a whopping $23,363.67. Insurance eventually covered about 80% of the cost. “But then my premium went way up — by $531.40.”

It’s a hidden tax that comes with the territory for many residents in these neighborhoods, where insufficient capacity in

the sewer line means certain flooding, and basement backups, during heavy rains.

The Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) is well aware of the problem. The utility is now halfway through its awardwinning Green City, Clean Waters plan, which aims to tackle sewer problems across the city, primarily by absorbing stormwater with green infrastructure such as trees, gardens and rain barrels. In the Northwest, PWD is also considering a major traditional infrastructure project — a massive five-mile tunnel underneath both neighborhoods — to address the acute flooding and basement backups.

Dubbed the Wingohocking Relief Sewer Tunnel, the potential solution would likely cost up to $800 million and take at least a decade to complete, according to recent PWD estimates. And while PWD has selected the engineering firm Brown and Caldwell to do a preliminary assessment, it has yet to raise the full $5 million needed to pay even for this small first step. The City did get $103,000 in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities

Rev. Chester Williams has taken steps to ensure that his washer and dryer don’t get ruined the next time his basement floods.

(BRIC) funds, but it’s still looking for $3.6 million in federal assistance before it can pay for the work. The proposal is now more than a year behind schedule with no apparent start date on the horizon.

“It does seem to still be more of a theoretical prospect than an actual project,” says Adam Nagel, director of government affairs at PennFuture, a statewide nonprofit focusing on a clean energy economy and protecting air, water, land and sustainable communities.

Meanwhile, people like Bell and her East Mount Airy neighbors have no idea what may be coming, or what the City has in mind.

“There’s too much that’s not being talked about,” says Maurice Sampson II of Mount Airy, who serves as the Eastern Pennsylvania director of Clean Water Action. “I think they don’t tell us because they’re afraid of how we’ll react, but the City’s attitude of not talking, and not sharing information, is not serving us well. We have a really difficult situation on our hands and our elected leaders need to be clear with residents about what’s going on.”

The problem

As currently proposed, the tunnel would address twin problems of chronic flooding in lowland areas of East Mount Airy and Germantown and sewage overflow into the region’s rivers and creeks.

Both issues stem from decisions made more than a century ago when City officials encapsulated and paved over Wingohocking Creek, which had been used as a de facto sewer by nearby houses and businesses, turning it into a sewer pipe. Like many cities that grew and developed during those years, they used the same pipe to carry stormwater.

Both neighborhoods continued to grow, adding many more new houses and businesses with each passing year. And now, almost a century later, the line is much too small for the load it has to carry.

While flooding is particularly severe in this part of Northwest Philly, there are strained sewer lines all over the city. Its vast network of overwhelmed former creeks now dump billions of gallons of stormwater mixed with raw sewage into our waterways

each year — from Tacony and Cobbs creeks to the Schuylkill and the Delaware rivers.

This, of course, violates national standards for clean water. So more than a decade ago, PWD entered into a $2.5 billion agreement with federal regulators to address the problem with the Green City, Clean Waters plan. Most of that spending — $1.7 billion — was slated for building the green infrastructure that would capture stormwater before it could reach overwhelmed sewer lines. It was hailed as a nationally innovative approach during a time when other major cities like Milwaukee and Chicago were spending the bulk of their billions on traditional, gray infrastructure solutions like tunnels.

Grid, in partnership with the Chestnut Hill Local and Delaware Currents, has previously reported that, with the plan at its halfway mark, some clean water advocates are questioning whether it’s enough. With PWD currently on pace to miss its target for green infrastructure installations by a 2035 deadline, and the City’s sewers still spilling upwards of 10 billion gallons of untreated

overflow into our waterways per year, they wonder whether more money should be spent on traditional infrastructure, like the proposed Wingohocking tunnel.

The historic Wingohocking Creek sewer currently sends more raw sewage into waterways than any other in Philadelphia, and advocates say the decision about what to do is pivotal.

“It’s really crazy that, 50 years after the Clean Water Act, we still have this condition,” says Julie Slavet, executive director of the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, which advocates for the Tacony Creek, the current dumping ground for the Northwest’s extra sewer water. “This is the biggest sewer shed in the city — it’s crazy how big. Just the fact that Germantown stormwater and sewage end up over here in our creek shows you how enormous the problem is.”

The plan

According to Water Department documents, the proposed tunnel would address flooding in Germantown, where it is the most severe, and also parts of East Mount Airy, Logan, Feltonville and Juniata Park.

It would be about five miles long with a 10 to 20-foot diameter and run some 50 to 100 feet deep under East Mount Airy and Germantown, from Chew Avenue and Washington Lane to Tacony Creek Park. It would function as a storage tank for combined stormwater and sewage during heavy rains; a second tunnel would carry the wastewater to the Northeast Water Pollution Control Plant where it would be treated before being released into the Delaware River.

To drill the path for this proposed tunnel, contractors would need to sink at least two deep shafts, which they would use to position boring equipment for drilling large horizontal holes. From above ground, neighbors would simply see two big construction sites (locations under consideration include Washington Lane between Chew Avenue and Ardleigh Street, and on Church Lane near Chew Avenue).

While the tunnel appears to be the likeliest solution, PWD is also asking engineers to consider a series of large underground storage tanks as an alternate. These would be easier and less expensive to build: PWD estimates up to $600 million. But they

I know too many people who’ve lost so much — expensive equipment, yes, but also family photos and mementos that you can’t replace.”

— rev. chester williams, Germantown resident

would be more expensive to maintain and could also stink.

Proposed sites for such tanks are SEPTA’s Sedgwick Regional Rail Station, the Finley Recreation Center, Cliveden Park, Martin Luther King High School, the Lonnie Young Recreation Center and the Waterview Recreation Center.

According to a 2019 PWD report, either option could reduce flood depths by as much as 80% and eliminate up to two-thirds of basement backups.

Green City, Clean Waters

Taking this much sewer overflow off neighborhood streets would result in a major step toward satisfying the City’s obligation to meet federal clean water standards, which PWD has promised to do with its Green City, Clean Waters initiative.

Still, Patrick Starr, the southeast region’s executive vice president of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, says some environ-

mental advocates are leery of such a big civil engineering project.

“Some people are suspicious of the tunnel because they’re worried it might be an example of the City pulling back from the green infrastructure plan,” says Starr, who describes himself as a “big defender” of the green infrastructure plan. “But I have come to understand that you’ve got to do something significant, and this is exactly the kind of gray infrastructure intervention that makes the most sense. The overflow into the Tacony is such that, frankly, it would be really difficult to address with green stormwater solutions alone. The park itself is nice, but the creek water? I wouldn’t get near it.”

Howard Neukrug, who now leads The Water Center at the University of Pennsylvania and was instrumental in developing Green City, Clean Waters in his former role as PWD Commissioner, says gray infrastructure like the Germantown tunnel was always supposed to be a major part of the plan.

“Green City, Clean Waters was always a huge gray infrastructure project, it’s just that the part that gained national attention for being such a progressive vision was the green part of it,” he says. “Both are incredibly important in their own way, and without the two parts we would not have reached agreement with the federal government.”

Neukrug also says that flooding in Germantown — and all over the city for that matter — is a predictable result of mixing Philadelphia’s historic choices with the increasing impact of development and climate change. The creeks and streams that once helped move stormwater are now encased in bricks and cement, and too much of the land that could have absorbed it is covered with impervious surfaces, like buildings and parking lots.

“The reality is that the land here was doing very well before we got involved, and now we built these houses next to sewers that have rivers running through them.”

In the meantime

Whatever fix the City chooses, it’s likely to be years away. Meanwhile, the rains keep coming, bringing a slow-rolling wave of destruction with them. Not only does chronic flooding damage residents’ property, it gnaws away at the ground beneath their feet. Pooling water can weaken old brick sewers until they crack and let soil wash in, causing streets to sink.

“I’ve been at meetings where people talked about how the pole in front of their houses was leaning because there wasn’t any dirt left under the sidewalks,” Slavet says.

Bell points to the sinkholes that often open up along Musgrave Street. “We have massive erosion there, from Hortter Street all the way to Chew Avenue. It caves in periodically and then gets patched up, yet we still have the City handing out new building permits. There’s a new set of nine townhouses planned for right around the corner on Pleasant Street. What kind of impact do you think that’s going to have?”

Residents are wondering why there isn’t a better plan for the here and now.

In early 2020, PWD did convene the Germantown Community Flood Risk Management Task Force to discuss problems and solutions. As a result of those meetings, the department conducted a neighborhood survey about prior flood experiences and climate change, put up some road signs that warn of potential flooding, published a fact sheet and mailed informational brochures about flood risk and flood insurance to thousands of neighbors on flood-prone blocks.

It also collaborated with the U.S. Water Alliance to fund an arts project, led by Philadelphia’s then-Poet Laureate Trapeta Mayson, to help build awareness. In her report on that project, Mayson noted just how difficult that is in Germantown, where a mix of chronic social ills can feel more pressing

than occasional floods.

“Sparking conversation around a specific issue that only comes up for people at certain times (like when there is a historic rain event) when there are so many other immediate issues impacting them on a daily basis — gun violence, gentrification, food security, and jobs — can be difficult,” she wrote in her report, “Healing and Repair from a History of Flooding in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

Other solutions

While awareness is good and debate over what mix of green or traditional infrastructure is needed to solve the Northwest’s flooding problems is paramount, Sampson says he thinks the City should be taking much more aggressive steps to help. Mandatory disclosure of flood risk during real estate transactions, for instance, would be a good start.

“People need to know what’s going to happen so that they can make some decision about where they’re going to live,” he says. “Would that result in a great outpouring of anger? Yes. And it may not be practical. But it certainly is rational.”

Williams, of Germantown, agrees.

“It’s just not right that we weren’t told what the situation is when we bought these houses,” he says.

According to spokesperson Brian Rademaekers, the Water Department does not have the authority to regulate disclosure requirements during real estate transactions.

Federally recognized floodplains, which usually follow open waterways and are outlined by FEMA, come with strict federal oversight of what can and cannot be built. But Germantown’s floods don’t show up on FEMA maps because the creek was covered up long ago.

Rademaekers suggested that homebuyers check online sites that track actual flooding events, such as riskfactor com and crexi com

“Riskfactor.com serves as the current best home buyer alert for potential flood risk in Germantown, and it is now included in nearly all real estate transaction databases on which properties are publicly listed for sale,” he says. “We’ve found them to be quite accurate for the entire upper Northwest section of Philadelphia, including Germantown.”

Williams says he thinks it’s unfair that residents like him weren’t told about the flood risk before buying — and that the City should help residents pay for clean-

Rev. Williams keeps valuables off the floor in his basement, but the floods and persisting dampness still damage the plaster.

ing up the mess. “The City knew this was a problem, and never told us that we were in a flood zone.”

Emaleigh Doley, executive director of the Germantown United Community Development Corporation, says government help with the cost of insurance might be the most pressing need.

“Some government entity is needed to broker insurance because it’s so hard for people to get coverage,” Doley says.

Slavet points out that small-scale solutions shouldn’t be overlooked. “Sometimes it seems like we look at really big solutions, instead of just going property by property and considering the best option,” she added. “There are places in our upstream communities where houses flood regularly, and eventually the township bought out the owners and demolished the buildings.”

More leadership

Most clean water advocates and residents who live with the immediate impact of all this flooding understand how big and complex the problem is and don’t expect PWD to pull out a magic wand.

But they do question whether the City’s

overall response has been effective — in Germantown and beyond. They point to Eastwick, where residents have struggled for decades with recurrent flooding from Cobbs and Darby creeks. The City has made some progress there over the past years, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposing a potential levee to protect Eastwick from floodwaters. Yet it still isn’t clear who will make the final decision on what will be done, nor when that decision will be forthcoming. There, too, residents and nonprofits are advocating for a range of solutions — from the levee to better insurance to potential home buyouts.

Kelly O’Day, a retired environmental engineer and former member of the community task force who lives in East Mount Airy, understands the extent of the challenge better than most. He says the problem shouldn’t be laid at the door of the Water

Department, but should also include other parts of City leadership, such as the Department of Licenses and Inspection.

“Why doesn’t the City have a floodplain management system for areas like the Wingohocking?” he asks. “Why is the City still issuing permits in places we know to be at risk of major flooding?”

Slavet says she too thinks more government help is needed; she points to Boston, where she’s from.

“Boston did the Big Dig and cleaned up the Boston Harbor pollution,” she says. “These kinds of things are big, yes, but with the right kind of leadership they can get done.” ◆

carla robinson is the editor of the Chestnut Hill Local. This story was produced in partnership with the Chestnut Hill Local. Kyle Bagenstose contributed to this report.

Why is the City still issuing permits in places we know to be at risk of major flooding?”

kelly o ’ day, East Mount Airy resident

The 2024 City Nature Challenge is upon us!

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 we live while producing reams of data useful for science and conservation.

And you might be surprised by just how much biodiversity there is to be found in Philly. The City has recorded more than 325 species of birds; numerous butterflies including monarchs live and breed in the city; there are snakes, frogs, dragonflies, foxes and bats — not to mention thousands of species of plants and fungi.

City Nature Challenge

If you are interested in contributing and helping Philly win the City Nature Challenge, download the iNaturalist app (or visit inaturalist org) and start documenting the wildlife in your area. For tips and more information, check out citynaturechallenge.org.

WHAT ARE YOU GARDENING FOR?

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.

In this issue, we explore how we can expand that welcome mat to include our wild neighbors; if you’ve got some soil to grow plants, you can grow plants that fit into our local food webs. They feed the local bugs, which feed other bugs, which feed the local birds, and so on.

Not sure where to start?

There are plenty of local gardens you can visit for inspiration, and professionals you can hire to help.

We hope these articles move you to start digging in the dirt. Maybe you don’t rip out every non-native plant and start over, but each season is a chance to add another wildflower, another pot with an ecologically beneficial species.

And if enough of us do it, we can patch together some serious habitat, as entomologist and author Doug Tallamy discusses in his book “Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard” (or in the little garden patch behind your rowhouse, in your community garden plot, or even in a few planters on your stoop).

A

Nature won’t be something somewhere out there beyond your block, it will be right here, where we live.

great spangled fritillary feeding on a purple coneflower

The Hopeful Garden

Author and entomologist Doug Tallamy talks about what we can all do to make our yards more welcoming to wildlife

INTERVIEW BY ZANE IRWIN

So you want to save the world? Start small: save your backyard.

That’s the message University of Delaware professor Doug Tallamy has been trumpeting for decades. His work in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology fuses scientific scholarship with rhetorical flair, packaged into practical advice for everyone who owes their life to an ecosystem — that is, everyone.

The work of Tallamy and his peers has helped inspire a rising tide of devotion to home ecological restoration, which wasn’t as fashionable 20 years ago. Nevertheless, legislators and landscaping companies have been slow to prioritize biodiversity over profit.

Tallamy’s 2020 call to arms, “Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard,” outlines his ambitious vision for a wild national landscape stitched together by countless, individual native gardens. Grid writer Zane Irwin sat down with Tallamy to ask how that movement has evolved and what its future might look like in Philadelphia.

You’ve written that the loss of biodiversity is not just an environmental issue, it’s a human issue. Can you explain what you mean by that? We are products of nature. And our culture has been disconnected from nature for so long that it’s hard to convince people of that. You say, “I live in the middle of Manhattan. I don’t need nature at all.” Well, you can only live in the middle of Manhattan because there’s functional nature someplace else providing all the ecosystem services you need on a daily basis.

How can people in Philadelphia see or understand the consequences of harming our own ecosystems? Let’s not talk about ecosystems, let’s talk about insects. If insects disappeared, we would lose 90% of our flowering plants. And if that happened, the energy flow through our terrestrial ecosystems that support the food webs that support our animals — our amphibians, our reptiles, our birds and our mammals — would all collapse. So whether you live in Philly, outside of Philly, in the Mojave Desert, it doesn’t matter: If we lost our insects, we’d be gone.

But the homeowner doesn’t know this. They don’t know that when they choose a crepe myrtle — which is a beautiful ornamental plant from Asia — as a decoration for their yard, nothing eats a crepe myrtle. So this is where the responsibility of the homeowner comes in. Plant choice matters.

Do you think we’re in a world where more people want to connect with nature, or do you think we’re only getting further from it? I think we’re moving in the right direction. People are upset about the loss of biodiversity and when I tell them there’s something they can actually do about it, they get excited.

We’ve lost 3 billion breeding birds in North America in the last 50 years. We’ve got global insect decline. The United Nations says we’re going to lose a million species to extinction in the next 20 years. These headlines are upsetting people.

Now, the “getting worse” part is that we keep adding people to a finite planet with finite resources. But aside from that, the

people that are here are getting more and more on board that we actually can turn things around.

Environmental issues are abstract and depressing for a lot of people. What communication strategies do you use to overcome that barrier to entry? First of all, I use examples of how well this works and I start with what’s happened right at our house. We got a piece of a farm back in the year 2000. There were very few plants here and the plants that were here were all invasive species. So our job was to put it back together again.

And I documented the number of birds that are breeding here. We have recorded 62 species of birds that have bred on our property over the last 23 years, because we put the plants back that make all that bird food. You show pictures of this and people say, “Hey, it really does work! So maybe I can do the same thing.”

E.O. Wilson says we all have biophilia. I try to tap into that.

Is there any wiggle room for people who want to use just a few non-native plants, so long as they’re not invasive? I’ve heard somewhere that there’s a 70-30 rule. You know where that 70% figure came from? My lab. So yes, I agree, there’s room for compromise. No compromise on invasives, they’re ecological tumors. But you can have your ginkgo tree, just don’t let it dominate your landscape.

A lot of people express their creativity and art using their landscape. I’m not trying to squash all that. The real challenge now is,

how do we make functional landscapes that are beautiful?

I like to use the analogy of telephone poles. They’re ugly as sin, they’re everywhere, and nobody complains about them. Nobody says, “I’m going to chop down the telephone pole in front of my house because it’s ugly.” It is ugly, but it’s delivering a vital service.

Well, our native plants are delivering a vital service. We have to understand it’s not optional, it’s essential.

We are products of nature. And our culture has been disconnected from nature for so long that it’s hard to convince people of that.”

DOUG TALLAMY

What if someone lives in the city in an apartment? How can they help? They don’t have as much power as somebody with a couple of acres, but they do have a balcony. And they can put container plants on that balcony and pollinators will use that.

If you think of our cities as this maze of giant rocky outcrops, you could put plants all over them the way it would be in nature.

If people want to know how to do container gardening with native plants, they can go to our website, homegrownnationalpark.org.

Your first book, “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens,” came out in 2007 and left a huge mark on the field. What has changed since then? If you could rewrite it today, what would be different? Well, I kind of did rewrite it, it’s called “Nature’s Best Hope.” I wrote “Bringing Nature Home” based on theory I was taught in graduate school in the ’70s, but we hadn’t done the big experiments yet. So the next step was to document the degree to which non-native plants are or are not supporting the food web. I didn’t know chickadees needed thousands of caterpillars to make one clutch. But we do know it now.

I think the big thing that’s changed, though, is the general attitude. In the beginning it was a much harder sell. I did a webinar last year out of Ohio State University with 4,700 people. Before, we had to spend a lot of time just trying to convince people that invasive plants were not a great idea. We’re way past that.

Any closing arguments? We’ll just call it good Earth stewardship — it is everybody’s responsibility because everybody requires it. It’s not just the gardeners. It’s not just the tree huggers. If you hate gardening, it’s still your responsibility to have an ecologically-friendly yard.

If you’re claiming to own a piece of the Earth, you don’t have the ethical right to destroy that piece of the Earth. It affects everybody else.

If you’re not going to garden, you can vote. Don’t ever vote for somebody who denies the existence of science. You’re voting for somebody who’s going to control what your kids and your grandkids and your life is gonna be like. That’s a real responsibility.

ROB CARDILLO

Welcome Back, Nature

A network of habitats for birds and bees is blooming in Southwest Philadelphia

STORY

BY JORDAN TEICHER

Most mornings, Victoria MilesChambliss 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 the garden,” she says. “It’s like an oasis in the middle of Southwest Philadelphia.”

It’s not the only place in the neighborhood that’s seeing new visitors. In dozens of sites around Kingsessing, birds, bees, butterflies and other pollinators are finding new places to spread their wings thanks to $1 million from the federally-funded Pollinator Network spearheaded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the National Wildlife Federation, Audubon Mid-Atlantic, the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum and Thomas Jefferson University. Since the summer of 2022, the growing network has been making Southwest Philadelphia community gardens, front yards and planter boxes more friendly for the creatures we all depend upon.

It’s an urgent mission. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, three quarters of the world’s flowering plants and about a third of the world’s food crops need pollinators to reproduce. But around the world, pollinator populations are disappearing due to habitat loss, disease and environmental contaminants. Dense urban areas covered in asphalt and concrete can be especially hostile environments for pollinators. With strategically-located green space and the right plantings, however, they can thrive in cities. Those same interventions also make cities healthier for people.

“We think of it as a mission overlap,” says Robin Irizarry, manager for the Delaware River Watershed Program for Audubon Mid-Atlantic. “We’re looking at conservation, but we are also really invested in these communities being able to have access to healthy green space.”

Greg Thompson (second from left), pictured here along with other volunteers, says the pollinator garden at the Glenda Ann Christopher Memorial Park has brought nature back to the neighborhood.

Our block has really changed since we put in the garden. It’s like an oasis in the middle of Southwest Philadelphia.”

VICTORIA MILES-CHAMBLISS, Kingsessing resident

According to Kimberlee Douglas, director of Landscape Architecture at Jefferson, pollinators have three requirements for survival.

“They need food, water and cover. And they need them in close proximity. They need networks.”

In many parts of Philadelphia, such networks can be hard to find. While 95% of Philadelphia residents have a park within a 10-minute walk, the amount of green space available varies greatly based on income and race. According to a report from the Trust for Public Land, residents of Philadelphia’s lower-income neighborhoods have access to 44% less park space per capita than richer neighborhoods. Neighborhoods of color, meanwhile, have 42% less park space compared to white neighborhoods.

And just because a space is green doesn’t mean it’s a suitable habitat for pollinators. Some parks in the city contain a simple piece of lawn with none of the native plants — like viburnum, goldenrod and rudbeckia — and water features that pollinators need to survive.

Residents of underserved communities who want to create new parks often face substantial financial and bureaucratic chal-

lenges. To overcome them, Douglas and her colleague Drew Harris came up with a way to cut costs and red tape. Their initiative, Park in a Truck, allows communities to design, build and maintain their own green spaces. And as a partner in the Pollinator Network, it’s helping those communities ensure that they provide habitat for pollinators.

Since these spaces don’t require poured cement, they’re much cheaper to construct than conventional parks. “With Park in a Truck, it’s $10 to $12 per square foot to do a park,” Douglas says. “If you were to do a typical park with concrete and lights that could be $50 or $60 per square foot.”

The modular nature of the Park in a Truck makes it easy for community members to participate in the design process. That was the case for the Cecil Street Community Garden. “After the drawings were done, we placed them on my railing on my porch and we had neighbors come, take a piece of paper, and write whether they wanted option A or option B,” says Miles-Chambliss. The group tallied the votes and the more popular design — one that provides ample benches and chairs for facilitating conversation between neighbors — became reality.

Park in a Truck has helped large community gardens like Cecil Street take shape. It has also helped establish green spaces on a much smaller scale, including front yard gardens and street planters. Bringing nature closer to home is good for pollinators and people alike, Douglas says. “If you’re 3 or 83, 10 minutes is a long walk to get to a park. I would like a park on every block, so instead of going 10 minutes to get to a park, you just have to go 30 seconds.”

Greg Thompson shared MilesChambliss’ desire for more green space in Kingsessing. A few years ago, he started dreaming up a brighter future for a lot at 5900 Greenway Avenue, just a few blocks from the Cecil Street garden. For decades, the space had been used as a dumping ground for tires, sofas, mattresses and abandoned cars. But Thompson and his neighbors knew it could be something more.

“It was a major effort,” he says. “In 19 months, we were able to clear it, stabilize it and plant grass. Then slowly it started to come together.” Thompson and his collaborators added benches, lights and a wall filled with large photographs of community members who’ve passed away. In 2019, the transformed lot officially opened as the Glenda

Left: Victoria Miles-Chambliss sees the native plants in the Cecil Street Community Garden attracting birds into the neighborhood.

Ann Christopher Memorial Park and began serving, as Thompson puts it, as “a commercial for the community.” In the summers, neighbors use the park to host wedding receptions, birthday parties and baby showers.

After the addition of a pollinator garden last April, Thompson says, the park started attracting some new visitors. “A week or two after it went in they were there — bees, birds, butterflies and a lot more insects than we’ve ever seen,” he says.

For young people in the neighborhood, the revival of natural space is both an educational and economic opportunity. Youths hired through Park in a Truck’s Park Ambassador program are paid to keep the park clean. They’re also keeping tabs on the pollinators. “They’re using apps like iNaturalist to figure out what pollinators are there and get to know them. Who are the regulars throughout different seasons? What plants do they like visiting more than others?” says Carmelita Rosner, a community engagement specialist at the John Heinz Refuge.

Thompson wants to see more of those opportunities come to the neighborhood. In the course of his work as the owner of a land care company, he sees lots all over Southwest Philly that have potential to become the next green outdoor community center, and he’s already started to develop some of them. “Nature is coming back to the community,” he says.

Making Philadelphia more friendly for pollinators doesn’t necessarily require entirely new green spaces. According to Irizarry, gardeners throughout the city can make a big difference simply by changing the kinds of plants they choose and how they care for them. “Conventional landscaping gravitates toward plants that are bug-resistant and look immaculate all the time,” says Irizarry. “While they may serve some aesthetic purpose, they’re not really fulfilling an ecological purpose.”

Native plants, like flowering dogwood, inkberry holly and blueberries, he says, are not always the most readily available or affordable. But if people can access them and maintain them properly, they can provide an invaluable boost for pollinator populations. “We’re not tidying up every leaf that falls. We’re not blowing leaves with a leaf blower,” he says. “We want to maintain

those because we know that some of those beneficial native insects are actually spending the winter in those leaves. And the birds that are coming to our gardens are rummaging through those leaves looking for some of those bugs to eat.”

The Pollinator Network, Irizarry says, can’t make every green space in the city suitable for pollinators. But it can set an ex-

ample for others who believe in its mission.

“There’s certainly a lot more to be done to green our neighborhoods and make these spaces better for people, pollinators and birds,” says Irizarry. “We’re hoping some of these spaces really just serve as demonstration spaces and build momentum for this type of thoughtful approach to designing urban green space.” ◆

Robin Irizarry, of Audubon MidAtlantic, says gardens can enrich communities while serving as valuable habitat.

Dust to Dust

Pilot project shows plants can safely grow in sand made from glass. Can it be scaled up for industrial use? BY

The rain garden along Kelly Drive looks like any other installed by the Philadelphia Water Department: A mix of wildflowers, grasses, reeds and sedges grow in a shallow basin designed to soak up stormwater. The soil in which the plants sink their roots is what makes this particular garden unique. The two-foot-deep mix of compost and sand is part of a pilot to develop circular soil using recycled glass.

The thriving plants suggest the pilot is a success; the question now is how to turn it

BERNARD BROWN

from promising experiment to industrialscale solution.

Sand, and how we mine it, creates industrial-scale problems. Mined sand is all around us, but mostly out of sight. Sand makes up the glass jar your pickles came in; sand is buried under landscaping to improve drainage; an enormous quantity of sand is embedded within roads and buildings made of concrete.

Add it all up, and humans extract 50 billion tons of sand every year — loaded off of dunes and beaches, dredged from rivers and

dug out of the ground. The only natural resource humans use more of than sand is water. The environmental costs are enormous, including the direct impact on the mining sites as well as the emissions created by transporting large volumes of an extremely heavy material.

The landscape architecture firm OLIN designs projects that use large amounts of sand. “We use so much of it when we do green infrastructure projects: for drainage but also soil,” says Rebecca Popowski, a research associate at OLIN. As the firm

The Bottle Underground’s crusher turns unwanted glass bottles into sand.

The soil and sand market talks in millions of tons. Glass blowing [talks] in just tons.”

REBECCA DAVIES, Bottle Underground

sought ways to reduce the environmental impact of its projects, industrially-mined sand stood out as an input in need of a sustainable substitute.

Glass sand looked like a promising candidate. Glass is made from carefully melted sand, and crushing it yields sand again. Glass sand has already been tested as a material for civil engineering projects such as a base layer under pavement, so it seemed like a short leap to using it in landscaping. The existing research showed it was safe to put in the ground, “so that’s 80% of the way there,” Popowski says. “But if we put it in the ground with plants, would that work?”

Glass is made almost entirely from silica-based sand, but small quantities of other elements get added to facilitate manufacturing or to adjust the properties of the finished product, such as cobalt to produce a deep blue color. No one knew whether sand used in soil would leach those chemicals into the stormwater. And if so, would those chemicals affect the plants?

A test installation could answer those

questions, but first OLIN needed to find a local source of glass. What Philadelphians chuck in their blue bins wouldn’t work. Glass collected through single stream recycling gets crushed in the back of garbage trucks together with plastic, paper, and the food contaminating all of the above. They needed cleaner glass.

Ultimately OLIN found that uncontaminated supply of glass at the Bok Building in South Philadelphia. There, the Bottle Underground takes in glass containers from small businesses and households. Some of the vessels are used by the Underground’s for-profit sister organization, Remark Glass, to blow new glass products. Some are washed and sold intact for reuse, say to fill with wax for candle making. But some of the glass isn’t suited for either use.

Using a crushing machine purchased with grant funding, the Bottle Underground pulverizes the glass into sand. Unlike the tiny shards left on your floor when you drop a glass in the kitchen, the sand particles are smoothed by the crushing process.

In 2022 OLIN tested soil made from the glass sand in a drainage basin that was being retrofitted after having been damaged by Hurricane Ida. They found that the glass-sand soil performed pretty much the same as the soil made from natural sand. Water drained similarly, the plants grew about as well, and although measured levels of metals were slightly higher in the experimental soil, these levels were still well below the PA Department of Environmental Protection’s thresholds for residential soil.

Now the hard part is figuring out how to scale up recycled glass sand production. In the final report on the pilot, OLIN writes that its success can encourage public and private entities to demand glass-based sand in their construction projects, thus creating more demand.

The hope is that large materials recovery facilities (MRFs, or murfs) that take in municipal recycling could be persuaded to produce glass-based sand, but they would still have to solve the current back-of-the-truck contamination problem. Even assuming that they could supply glass clean enough to produce soil-worthy sand, the glass-based sand would still likely not be competitive with mined sand purely on price. “If the intention is to make glass sand competitive, that’s a challenge since we’re creating sand, not just moving it once. Is this market going to tolerate honest pricing for the product, not just commodity pricing?” says Rebecca Davies, co-founder of Bottle Underground.

Bottle Underground continues to pulverize glass into sand in the basement of Bok, but there is no immediate way they can increase the volume to a scale suitable for widespread use in landscaping and construction, “The soil and sand market talks in millions of tons,” Davies says. “Glass blowing [talks] in just tons. For the pilot our scale of intake was sufficient.”

Popowski says that OLIN has not tested mixes for vegetable gardening or residential use. Bottle Underground does plan to offer bags of glass-based sand for sale starting in April, making it possible for gardeners to mix up their own soil using glass-based sand and run their own homegrown pilots. ◆

Glass sand can substitute for mined sand in green stormwater infrastructure projects.

Highly Appropriate

Where to see native plants growing in Philadelphia and beyond

We’ve sung the praises of native plants numerous times in these pages. Because truly, what’s not to love? Native plants — or “regionally-appropriate” plants, as Ryan Drake, McCausland Natural Areas manager at Morris Arboretum, urges us to call them — have abundant ecological benefits. They attract pollinators, sequester carbon, promote biodiversity, prevent erosion and require less inputs to thrive.

“Especially in an urban area like Philly, with harsh conditions like heat and stormwater, plants that evolved here are used to functioning here,” Drake notes. “They’re tough plants that are adaptable.”

The only downside, in some conventional gardeners’ opinions, is that regionally-appropriate plants aren’t always considered as lovely or refined as exotic, non-native plants. There are a bunch of public gardens and arboretums in and around Philadelphia that bust that myth. Here, home gardeners and plant-curious visitors can see native species in situ, and gain inspiration and education about incorporating them and increasing diversity in their own landscapes.

Awbury Arboretum

Philadelphia, PA • awbury.org

➽ At this verdant arboretum in Philly’s historic Germantown neighborhood, there are plenty of native trees and shrubs to explore. They’re scattered throughout the 56acre property, though a grouping of them are planted right around the Francis Cope House, Awbury’s visitor’s center. Look for the fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus), as well as spectacular willow oaks (Quercus phellos) and red oaks (Quercus rubra). There are also a few American hollies (Ilex opaca), Winterberry hollies (Ilex verticillata) and a colony of bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) that’s surrounded by bees and

BY EMILY KOVACH

butterflies when it blooms each June. Free to the public.

Bartram’s Garden

Philadelphia, PA • bartramsgarden.org

➽ This horticultural oasis in Southwest Philadelphia offers many ways to observe native plants. Slightly northwest of the garden’s Eastwick Pavilion is the Pawpaw Grove, where two colonies of Asimina triloba trees grow, bearing the custardy fruits in late summer and early fall. Farther west, find the Meadow, a 17-acre open space on the former site of a gypsum factory, growing wild with native plants, like common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), which famously attracts monarch butterflies. At the eastern edge of the property, the 1.5-acre Tidal Wetlands is populated with native plants, including marsh rose (Rosa palustris Marsh) and spatterdock (Nuphar advena). Other native plants can be found in Bartram’s Native Medicinal Plant Display, Botanic Garden, Kitchen Garden and Common Flower Garden. Free to the public.

Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve

New Hope, PA • bhwp.org

➽ Bowman’s Hill is a self-described “museum specifically devoted to native plants,” and indeed, it has a lot to discover. Across the preserve’s 134 acres there are over 700 plants native to Pennsylvania. Walk its four miles of trails to experience different habitat areas. The Meadow is planted with a foundation of native grasses (switchgrass [Panicum virgatum], Indiangrass [Sorghastrum nutans] and bluestem) and dotted with another 105 different species of native grasses, sedges, rushes and wildflowers. The Heritage Forest and Penn’s Woods includes two woodland areas planted with native tree species. Founder’s Pond is aquascaped with native flowers like marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) and a population of a rare, native shooting star hybrid (Primula hybrid). Bowman’s Hill also sells native plants for home gardening and both its staff and website provide a wealth of knowledge on the topic. General

Caption tk

Spring at Stoneleigh in Villanova, Montgomery County.

admission is $12; $9 for seniors, military members, and students; $6 for children ages 5 to 14. Free for members and children under 5.

John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum

Philadelphia, PA • fws gov/refuge/ john-heinz-tinicum

➽ The largest remaining freshwater tidal marsh in Pennsylvania has over 10 miles of trails looping through the untamed landscape with fabulous birdwatching, great fishing spots and a wealth of native plants to observe. Establishing native plant species such as the subulate arrowhead (Sagittaria subulata), multi-flowered mud-plantain (Heteranthera multiflora) and Walter’s barnyard grass (Echinochloa walteri) has been a crucial part of restoring these wetlands. Maps, brochures and educational exhibits at the Visitor’s Center provide further information about these plant communities and the habitats across the refuge. Free to the public.

Morris Arboretum & Gardens

Philadelphia, PA • morrisarboretum org

➽ On the edge of Chestnut Hill, Morris Arboretum features both formal and natural landscapes, including constructed wetlands, native meadows, stream banks and, of course, a large and impressive collection of trees. While a main objective of the arboretum is to collect and conserve plant and tree species from across the world, there are plenty of native plants to discover here, too. Visitors can embark on various trails to see skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) blooming in the wet woods, red twig dogwood (Cornus sericea) stabilizing the banks

of the stream, and spring ephemerals like bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis L.) and trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) behind the Visitor’s Center. Part of Morris’ mission is teaching people how to utilize native plants in their gardens with a focus on functionality, like bioremediation, biodiversity and supporting specialized pollinators, and they offer a wealth of educational programming each season. General admission is $20; $18 for seniors; $10 for students, children ages 3 to 17, and retired military; $2 for ACCESS adults and children; free with a PennCard, for active military, and for children under 3; $10 for walk- or bike-in visitors.

Mt. Cuba Center

Greenville, DE • mtcubacenter.org

➽ Since 1935, this botanical garden in Delaware has been conserving, educating and promoting appreciation of native and historical plant species. Its “living collection” spans 30 acres of gardens and 1,000 acres of natural lands. A number of these plants are threatened by extinction and were grown from seeds collected in the wild, then propagated in Mt. Cuba Center’s greenhouse. In its innovative Trial Garden, researchers collect data on the ecological benefits, pest resistance and aesthetics of native plants. Some spring native plant highlights include the lush array of blooming trees on the Dogwood Path and a colorburst of spring ephemeral flowers along the Woods Path. A robust slate of public programming, including certification classes, tours and continuing education workshops, is offered each year. General admission is $15; $8 for children ages 6 to 17; free for children under 5, and members.

Stoneleigh: A Natural Garden

Villanova, PA • stoneleighgarden org

➽ Situated on the grounds of an historic estate on the Main Line, Stoneleigh is a sprawling public garden where the beauty of native plants is on full display. Many of these plants have been pruned and scaped to match the formality of the estate; anyone curious how native plants can look less wild and more manicured can see examples across the grounds. Native vines like crossvine ( Bignonia capreolata ), bright Ozark witchhazel (Hamamelis vernalis) flowers, elegantly gnarled northern white-cedar (Thuja occidentalis) are just a few examples of the hundreds of plants and trees to observe on the property. Free to the public.

Tyler Arboretum

Media, PA • tylerarboretum org

➽ There are native plants and trees spread across this 650-acre arboretum, but one of the best places to see them is on Tyler’s Native Woodland Walk. This easygoing pathway through a curated woodland setting highlights native species and cultivars; for instance, you might see a native geranium Geranium maculatum in its wild form growing alongside a more showy, cultivated variety called espresso geranium. Tyler’s North Woods and the trails outside its deer fence are exploding with native plants. In the spring, look out for ephemerals like Virginia bluebell (Mertensia virginica) and putty root orchids (Aplectrum hyemale).General admission is $18; $15 for seniors; $10 for children, students, and military; free for children under age 2. ◆

People & Pollinators

Community gardens are growing food for themselves and for local wildlife

BY SIANI COLÓN

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 going to start growing things in my backyard and I did try, but I had groundhogs that would eat up my vegetables,” Young recalls with a laugh.

Around that same time in 2013, Beverly

Carter, a high school science teacher and a friend of Young, reached out with the idea to start a community garden to address healthy food access and quality of life issues. Young identified empty lots in the Hestonville section of West Philly and the two recruited neighbors and got to work.

Since then, the nonprofit garden, Five Loaves Two Fish, has thrived, growing from 20 to 36 raised beds. Produce is enjoyed by the gardeners and excess is shared between neighbors and other nearby gardens, such as Viola Street Garden. The garden has been a venue for crochet classes, fall festivals and job

fairs. There are plans for this spring to have an open house to attract new gardeners.

And efforts are underway to attract other crucial members of the ecosystem. As urbanization and increased development has impacted the local ecology, the garden caretakers began seeking support to bring more pollinators to the space.

“We used to have a lot of birds flocking around, but now we have all these new houses going up and the ecology is being affected, even though Fairmount Park is not even that far away,” says Young.

In 2021, Young received an email from the

Community gardener Victor Young grows plants to feed people and pollinators.

Neighborhood Gardens Trust (NGT) asking if he would be willing to have native plants for pollinators incorporated into the garden. He immediately signed on.

The collaboration is part of the Pollinator Network Program, a jointly-funded partnership between the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Audubon Mid-atlantic, the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, Thomas Jefferson University and the National Wildlife Federation, with support from local community organizations like NGT.

The project’s mission is to plant flowers, bushes and trees to attract native pollinator species in Philadelphia. According to the U S Department of Agriculture, 75% of the world’s flowering plants and about 35% of the world’s food crops rely on animal pollinators to reproduce. But due to environmental degradation, these species are dying, putting crops at risk. Projects like this aim to build new habitats for these native pollinators.

With the assistance of the Pollinator Network Program, gardeners worked with the project organizers on the design and layout of a pollinator garden at Five Loaves Two Fish. Before they could get to planting, they had to clear the area. The garden sits on property that had six houses prior to demolition; bricks littered the grounds and had to be removed to plant.

Across the Schuylkill River, Brewerytown Garden faced similar struggles last year in their early plans to create a pollinator garden as part of the network, according to founding member Sharon Hildebrand.

“This was land that houses stood on several years ago,” Hildebrand says. “We’ve had to dig out quite a bit of stone in order to get good planting.”

Despite the challenges, gardeners planted natives like bee balm, phlox, milkweed, coneflower, eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis), false blue indigo (Baptisia australis), aster and various ferns and grasses — completely transforming the patch of land that had been strewn with litter.

Through the reciprocal relationship between the plant and pollinator, the garden has provided neighbors with healthy, accessible food like black-eyed peas, loofah, Korean radishes, yardlong beans, strawberries, raspberries, peaches, carrots, tomatoes and

peppers, to name a few crops.

“We estimate that last year we grew about 4 to 5,000 pounds of food,” Hildebrand says. “That wouldn’t be possible without the pollinators we attract.”

Another added benefit of the native plants and its pollinators are the decreased presence of garden pests such as aphids, harlequin beetles, white flies and leaf miners. Some insects eat foliage and stunt growth and others transmit diseases.

“We would have to clear complete areas of the garden that would become infested,” Hildebrand says. “And one year, we asked gardeners to stop growing brassicas because the harlequin beetles were out of control.”

The pests didn’t win the battle. Over the past five years, as Brewerytown gardeners began including native plants, they say they have noticed less of these insects thanks to garden-friendly ones — like birds, bees, butterflies and wasps — appearing.

We estimate that last year we grew about 4 to 5,000 pounds of food. That wouldn’t be possible without the pollinators we attract.”

SHARON HILDEBRAND, Brewerytown Garden

Two Fish relies heavily on its volunteers, but according to Young, most of the gardeners are elderly and have limited physical mobility.

“Some are close to 80 years old and they come out in the garden,” he says. “So when it comes time to clean up things and pull weeds, we enlist help.”

Volunteers from local high schools and colleges have helped pick up some of the responsibilities at the garden. To increase these efforts, Young says organizers have secured funding to pay high school students to tend to the space over the summer.

Young also realizes that while the importance of pollinators may be obvious to gardeners, more education must be done in the wider neighborhood, whether through pop-up education days or direct outreach.

“We need to pass this onto our neighbors,” Young says. “Even if they put potted plants out, that would help.”

Hildebrand also wants to expand education efforts this year, offering workshops and adding signage in the pollinator garden. Garden guests take advantage of a seating area by the pollinator garden for its peaceful atmosphere. Adding signage could educate passersby on the types of plants and their impact, as well as the work by the volunteers who made it possible. Hildebrand says she’d also like to add more planters with native plants along the sidewalk and create a shelter for their apiary.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation said funding for the pollinator project would sunset by the end of this summer, leaving the responsibility of continued upkeep to local organizations and the gardeners. But in a city that faces economic challenges, Young believes that the program has already made a big impact.

A habit gardeners are breaking in support of their new garden friends is clearing plants in the fall after harvest; instead, they leave dead plants to provide shelter for insects during winter months.

“The difference I’ve seen in the 11 or 12 years I’ve been gardening there is kind of amazing,” Hildebrand says.

The labor of biodiverse urban farming isn’t without its challenges. Five Loaves

“These pollinator gardens are going to help families all across the city,” Young says. “We’ve got some people actually growing tomatoes right on their back porches in pots. The pollinators that come to our garden will find their way to some of these people, too.”

Even if some residents think they don’t have the green thumb to tend to a whole garden, Young hopes more awareness and encouragement will increase the presence of pollinators in their neighborhood.

“Grow something on your porch,” Young says. “The pollinators will come.” ◆

A Zeal for Life

Putting sustainability over profit, these landscapers are planting native

Bekah Carminati spent her childhood making mud pies and inspecting insects in her backyard in Montgomery County. When she grew up, she took up landscaping as a way to channel her love for craft and nature.

But there was a problem. The company she worked for insisted on applying black dyed mulch, planting annuals and other gardening practices she sees as unharmonious with nature. “I did it for a season and ultimately was kind of repulsed by the whole practice of it,” she says.

So one year ago, the 24-year-old struck out on her own. She founded a one-woman landscaping company, Native Nymph Gardening, which has her installing native plants for 10 clients across Bucks and Mont-

gomery counties. Carminati has joined the expanding ranks of landscapers, nursery owners and backyard botanists in the Philadelphia area who advocate for native plant gardening. Their humble goal: prevent total ecosystem collapse.

Though scholars debate the best definition, many consider native plants to be those that grew in a given region or subregion before European colonization brought new species, agricultural methods and ideas about the natural world to the continent.

Over millions of years, birds, bugs and other forms of life evolved alongside native plants and one another, forming balanced ecosystems suited to the area. When foreign species are thrown into the mix, they often leech valuable resources from those systems while offering little in return. At their worst,

BY ZANE IRWIN

non-native plants can be invasive — metastasizing and choking out the flora that local insects and animals need to survive.

To see invasives in action, Carminati says, take a hike in the Wissahickon. Japanese barberry and multiflora rose plants — “prickly guys,” she calls them — were brought from East Asia and Europe in centuries past, posing a problem to the region’s native dwellers. When birds mistake their berries and rose hips for food, they don’t just miss out on more nutritious alternatives; they end up spreading the plants further, making the problem worse.

The menace of biodiversity loss can seem abstract and nitpicky to those of us who don’t spend our free time researching cultivars or pining for the return of the American chestnut. But when humans choose

blank lawns and exotic species over their life-sustaining counterparts, the consequences echo all the way up the food chain.

“Whether or not people want to admit it, we are a part of nature,” Carminati says. Basic human needs like clean water, breathable air and fresh food all stem from healthy ecosystems, according to the U.S.

Forest Service

Carminati’s business idea, which began as a note on her phone, revolves around sustainable gardening practices — from replacing thirsty, ecologically functionless lawns with backyard meadows, to uprooting invasives by the wheelbarrow full.

Carminati’s unwavering embrace of all things wild sets her apart in the gardening business. Despite increased interest in the subject — Google searches for “native plants near me” in the United States rise year after year — preserving ecosystems is an uphill battle.

One of the most formidable obstacles is

the popularity of the American lawn. A 2005 study led by NASA estimated that traditional turf lawns covered 40 million acres of the country. Lawns offer nothing to wandering critters in search of places to shelter or pollinate and often involve heavy water and pesticide use, yet hundreds of thousands are employed for their upkeep.

“The green industry is, for the most part, very un-green,” says Mount Airy landscape designer Brian Ames. Like Carminati, he started his own landscaping business, Wissahickon Landscape Design, out of frustration with the way profit trumped sustainability at larger companies. Every day for over a year, he worked a tree service job that exposed him and the environment to harsh chemicals, which left Ames feeling morally and physically unwell.

In his own work, Ames says he avoids pesticides, sources plants locally whenever possible and uses fall leaves as soil-enriching mulch rather than clearing them. Ames has found success in his “micro niche,” as he calls it, attracting a steady base of customers interested in native plants. But even with a solid Rolodex of eco-conscious clients, he says he can’t compete at scale with larger landscapers who cut costs via unsustainable means.

And there’s the added challenge that many consumers are reluctant to go all-in on native plants. Landowners may complain that they’re more difficult to maintain, attract unwanted pests, or just aren’t as visually stunning as Japanese honeysuckle, English ivy, gingko trees and other popular foreign options available at the local garden center.

Lee Armillei of Athyrium Design in Fort Washington, Montgomery County, sometimes struggles to convince clients not to fill their gardens with invasive species like burning bush. “They may have a hard time parting with it,” Armillei says. “Trying to talk them into taking that out and putting in something else that’s gonna be much smaller … that’s a challenge.”

Finally, knowing which plants to choose for a given setting goes beyond whether or not they’re native to the area. “A lot of times native plants are selected just because they’re native, but their long-term viability in the spot is no good,” Ames says. He looks at neighboring properties to make sure a plant will thrive in a specific microclimate.

For all his firmly-held beliefs on ecological gardening practices, Ames agrees that non-native plants can play a limited role in a healthy garden, whether as eye-pleasing ornamentals or to temper certain native species that spread and dominate like invasives.

“There’s definitely room for both [natives and non-natives], so long as the priority is supporting more [for the] ecosystem than for aesthetics,” says Carminati. Research has indicated that a 70 to 30 split between native and exotic herbage is acceptable in many cases, though even this modest goal is far from the norm.

“You don’t have to hire some fancy business to do what’s right and to benefit the ecosystem,” Carminati says. Lawn owners can start by dedicating small sections of their garden to native plants, eliminating pesticide use and letting fallen leaves be in the wintertime. And city dwellers can hang container plants from their balconies to attract pollinators.

Looking forward to a busy spring season, Carminati has several installations on deck across the Philadelphia suburbs. When it comes to native plants — and the innate zeal for serving nature that drives her work — she will talk to anyone who will listen.

“Everyone needs to know,” she says. ◆

Native plant landscaper Bekah Carminati helps homeowners turn yards into habitat, while also beautifying.

More than Cows and Plows

School district farm brings hands-on agricultural lessons to thousands of city students

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 the guidance of Anna Herman, a long-time urban agriculture educator, Lee is working alongside classmates to help de-

BY DAWN KANE

sign a demonstration garden at Fox Chase Farm, home to the School District of Philadelphia’s agricultural program.

The demonstration garden will be organized by plant family, with varieties from multiple cultures grouped in the same area, says Herman. Potatoes, she explains, originated in the Andes, but they have migrated around the world and become important in places like Ireland where they might be used in a different way. The origin stories are part of the learning.

In one area dedicated to tomatoes, the garden will have a variety that came to this region by slave ship, another through the Dominican Republic, one that connects to a local African American painter and yet another gifted from someone’s Italian grandmother. The objective for students is to know the plants’ geographic origins, the migration stories and the environmental factors that determine whether they’ll grow in Philadelphia, says Herman.

The demonstration garden is part of a new partnership with Fox Chase Farm, 112 acres in Northeast Philadelphia owned by the City and managed by the school district where students get hands-on experiences among diverse plants and animals. Programming at the farm seeks to honor the cultural backgrounds of the students themselves; the district’s students speak 167 languages.

Dr. Mandy Manna, founder of agriculture innovations and strategic development for the district, wants to reach every student. Lesson themes on the farm range from animal science to ecology to wildlife conservation, but Manna says that agriculture,

especially in controlled environments like greenhouses, can touch every trade from construction to robotics. “A lot of people will say agriculture is just the cows and the plows, but at the end of the day, we’re everything.”

Staff at the farm have trained 85 Agriculture Empowerment teachers throughout the district. This training enables teachers like Herman to bring students weekly for independent lessons. “They extend [lessons] here and think of the farm as being their living laboratory,” Manna says.

Some schools train older students to serve as farm tour guides for younger students with the advantage that sometimes they can explain things in the students’ native

languages. And often the learning works in both directions. A current project has students making loofah sponges after a sixth grade student from Puerto Rico talked about growing loofah from seeds back home.

For the U School’s demonstration garden, students are learning growing requirements for various crop families, planning crop rotations, measuring needed space and testing soils, says Herman. Lee will utilize her new learning by giving lessons to younger students from the surrounding neighborhood in a garden club. “Recently my best thing is soil testing,” Lee says. “I’ve done it three times in total, and I’ve even sent a lab back to get reports.” She likes the opportunity it gives her to be outside. “It’s fun. Sometimes

A lot of people will say agriculture is just the cows and the plows, but at the end of the day, we’re everything.”

DR. MANDY MANNA, Fox Chase Farm

you get dirty and messy, but I didn’t realize the importance of soil testing.”

Although the soil at Fox Chase Farm has tested as among the most fertile in the state, according to Manna, an environmental investigation by The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News in 2017 found that there are many sites in the city where soil contains hazardous levels of lead.

The economic impacts of agriculture and related industries in Pennsylvania are more than $81 billion, which makes it one of the state’s top industries, according to a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture report based on data from 2021.

However, food insecurity across the state averages 9.4%. In the second and third Congressional districts that represent most of Philadelphia, the rates of insecurity range between 12.7 and 15.7%, according to 2021 data reported by the nonpr ofit Feeding America.

To help bring about change, Manna says Fox Chase-supported horticultural programs are making their way into individual schools. Currently, products grown on the farm, like herbs, eggs and teas go to eleven culinary programs throughout the district. Summer employment for students supports this work; last year the farm hired 38 students during the summer. Manna says her goal is to up that number to 70 this year. She envisions a network of greenhouses, vertical growing systems and hydroponic gardens that will expand the available food supply in the surrounding communities.

Thirty thousand visitors, most of them schoolchildren, come to Fox Chase Farm each year, and Manna is certain their experiences expose them to a world of possibilities. “You can’t test for that enthusiasm and that experience, but you can see that the students are making the connections,” Manna says.

On a raw morning in February, Lisa Foley, the science teacher at Kennedy C. Crossan Elementary School, watched her fourth grade students ask questions as they sat around a boiling vat of sap slowly turning to maple syrup, a practice that traces back to Native Americans.

Foley has been bringing students to the farm for 12 years and says that it brings learning to life for them. “When we come to the farm, it’s not so much a trip, it’s an extension of everything we do in the classroom,” she says. “It’s almost like home away from home … everyone shows up for the farm.” ◆

U School senior Amani Lee is designing a garden at Fox Chase Farm to reflect the diversity of students in the school district.

Family Habitat

Environmental educator shares the journey of his yard’s native makeover

BY ANTHONY WAYNE CROASDALE

In 2018, at 42 years old, I finally became a homeowner. I had landscaped my previous rental properties, only to have contractors destroy the plantings, or I would move, wondering if my plants persist. Now, I had autonomy over my property and could alter the grounds as I saw fit. More accurately, I had the authority to remove or install the plants my wife approved.

Our home is in Upper Roxborough. We live in a single house on a tenth of an acre, about one hundred feet from Wissahickon Valley Park, with portions of our front and back yards on steep slopes. The space between our house and our neighbors’ is larger than the yards of the Wissinoming and Mayfair homes I grew up in. Our backyard is about 40-by-50 feet; as a native of Philadelphia, I think it’s enormous. My wife is from Texas and thinks it’s tiny.

My overall strategy was to keep the front of the house landscaped similarly to our neighbors while transforming areas of the back and side yards into wildlife habitats. Deciding what to remove and keep is a good place to start. The slope of our front yard is covered with pachysandra (Pachysandra terminalis). I wanted to remove this popular but invasive species immediately. My wife wanted to wait until we had a replacement. So, in the meantime, I planted several wild rhododendrons (Rhododendron maximum) in the pachysandra. I hope that by adding more native shrubs, I will shade out the Pachysandra as the shrubs overlap.

Outside the pachysandra patch, I planted a sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) and a common serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea). We removed a diseased pink flowering dogwood and replaced it with an eastern redbud. We planted a southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) around the side of the house. These flowering trees and shrubs are native analogs to our neighbor’s cherries and azaleas.

Our front yard hosts a gorgeous gray birch (Betula populifolia), but unfortunately, our street tree is a Bradford pear that is too expensive to remove. This invasive species often drops branches in storms. At least it attracts birds such as cedar waxwings that eat the fruit. The house also came with a dead spruce tree. We hired an arborist to

New homeowner Anthony Wayne Croasdale jumped at the opportunity to turn his steep backyard into a meadow when he became a homeowner.

remove only the portion that could fall on our neighbor’s house. We left about twelve feet of trunk for woodpeckers and other birds to enjoy. We will eventually install a screech owl box on it.

The side yard had a small grove of sassafras and a black walnut (Juglans nigra) that we gladly kept, and then added strawberry bush (Euonymus americanus), arrowwood viburnum (Viburnum dentatum) and chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia).

The backyard is hidden behind a wooden fence, where we could get wild. The primary considerations were the steep slope and leaving some play area for a future child. Approximately one-quarter of the slope’s width along the fence was covered in English ivy. We will deal with that later. Since the steep slope is difficult to mow, it lent a convenient excuse for eliminating turf grass. We kept the grass directly behind and level with our house and the relatively flat area at the top of the hill. This area gets full sun, perfect for a native meadow.

I had about a 20-by-25 foot area to plant. We mowed the lawn very short in late May and installed about 300 plugs of around 30 native forbs (wildflowers) and grasses. Plugs of native “warm season” grasses like little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and wildflowers such as purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) will grow in the summer and shade out the turf grass.

Now, it was time to tackle the English ivy patch. After a weed-whacking attempt gave me a bad rash thanks to some hidden poison ivy, we resorted to hand-pulling the English ivy, which has proven to be effective. We made this a shady woodland garden and planted three American pawpaws (Asimina triloba) and native shrubs. We also used herbaceous plants like American alumroot (Heuchera americana) and mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum).

In 2020, our “future” child became a reality — she is happy to help us weed. She delights in the lightning bug show, facilitated by ample areas of leaf litter where their larvae spend the winter. She recently scolded me for raking leaves, not realizing I was clearing a path. Our daughter enjoys playing on the patches of grass. She also loves exploring the meadow and watching butterflies, bees and other pollinators; I look forward to her growing up in the habitat we create together. ◆

The Green Pages

Shop your values at these local businesses

BIKE SHOP

Firth & Wilson

Transport Cycles

Full-service bicycle shop specializing in transportation & cargo bicycles, including electric assist. Brands include Brompton & Tern. South Kensington & South Philly locations. transportcycle.com

Trophy Bikes

We specialize in the ingenious BROMPTON BICYCLE, made & designed in LONDON to save you time — and space — with its fast, compact fold. OPEN Wed-Sat, 12-6 pm at 133 S. 23rd St. On the Web @trophybikes

BOOK STORE

Books & Stuff

They can ban books in our libraries and schools, but they can’t ban the books in your home library. Grow your home library! Black woman-owned online shop for children, teens & adults. booksandstuff.info

COMPOSTING

Back to Earth

Compost Crew

Residential curbside compost pick-up, commercial pick-up, five collection sites & compost education workshops. Montgomery County & parts of Chester County. First month free trial. backtoearthcompost.com

Bennett Compost

The area’s longest running organics collection service (est 2009) serving all of Philadelphia with residential and commercial pickups and locallymade soil products. 215.520.2406 bennettcompost.com

Circle Compost

We’re a woman-owned hyper-local business. We offer 2 or 5 gallon buckets & haul with e-bikes & motor vehicles. We offer finished compost, lawn waste pickups & commercial services. 30 day free trial! ............ circlecompost.com

FASHION

Stitch And Destroy

STITCH AND DESTROY creates upcycled alternative fashions and accessories from pre-loved clothing and textile waste. The STITCH AND DESTROY storefront opens May 4th at 523 S 4th St.................... stitchanddestroy.com

GREEN BURIAL

Laurel Hill

With our commitment to sustainability, Laurel Hill Cemeteries & Funeral Home specializes in green burials and funerals, has a variety of eco-friendly products to choose from, and offers pet aquamation............. laurelhillphl.com

GROCERY

Kimberton

Whole Foods

A family-owned and operated natural grocery store with seven locations in Southeastern PA, selling local, organic and sustainablygrown food for over thirty years. kimbertonwholefoods.com

MAKERS

Mount Airy Candle Co.

Makers of uniquely scented candles, handcrafted perfumery and body care products. Follow us on Instagram @mountairycandleco and find us at retailers throughout Greater Philadelphia....mountairycandle.com

Tombino.shop

Manhole Covers from the world over permanently etched into Functional Art. Cork Coasters, Trivets. Wood Magnets & Wall Art. Hand-drawn & Handmade in Philadelphia. From Aalborg to Zurich get your city!................. tombino.shop

ATTENTION:

Makers, small businesses and green entrepreneurs: Place your ad here!

email alex@gridphilly.com

Patio Pollinators

Even the smallest backyard can be a big help for local wildlife WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY BRYAN SATALINO

In Philadelphia, it’s uncommon for the average resident to have more than 150 square feet of back-patio space. Often, concrete and hardscaping take precedence over lawns or gardens. This trend towards paved areas diminishes habitat for local wildlife, including pollinators like bees, butterflies and birds. Efforts such as the Philadelphia Pollinator Network and Pollinator Pathways aim to counteract this by creating a network of pollinator gardens throughout the city. Even small patios or balconies can offer a sanctuary for native insects; below are native perennial flowers that are favored by local pollinators and can thrive in pots and planters with proper care.

Gray-headed Coneflower

(Ratibida pinnata)

Description: Distinctive drooping yellow petals and a prominent, coneshaped seed head. Attracts: Bees, butterflies and other pollinators are attracted to its nectar-rich flowers.

Prefers: Thrives in full sun to partial shade and well-drained soil.

Butterfly Weed

(Asclepias tuberosa)

Description: Bright orange to yellow-orange flowers arranged in clusters. Attracts: Bees, butterflies, especially monarch butterflies, as it is a crucial plant for their life cycle.

Prefers: Thrives in full sun and well-drained, sandy soil.

Joe-pye Weed

(Eutrochium purpureum)

Description: Large, domed clusters of pink to purple flowers. Attracts: Butterflies and bees are commonly attracted to its flowers. Prefers: Moist to wet soil and is well-suited for rain gardens. It prefers full sun to partial shade.

Anise Hyssop

(Agastache foeniculum)

Description: Herb with aromatic leaves and spikes of tubular flowers in shades of lavender to blue. Attracts: Bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other pollinators. Prefers: Full sun and well-drained soil.

Aromatic Aster

(Symphyotrichum oblongifolium)

Description: Produces masses of small, daisy-like flowers with a sweet fragrance. Attracts: Bees and butterflies are commonly attracted to its blooms. Prefers: Full sun and well-drained soil. It is a resilient plant that is resistant to deer and rabbits.

Purple Coneflower

(Echinacea purpurea)

Description: Striking pink to purple daisy-like flowers and a spiky orange-brown central cone. Attracts: Bees and butterflies are attracted to the nectar-rich flowers. Prefers: Echinacea purpurea prefers full sun and well-drained soil.

Scarlet Beebalm

(Monarda didyma)

Description: Showy, tubular flowers in shades of pink, red or purple. Attracts: Bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other pollinators. Prefers: Monarda prefers full sun to partial shade and well-drained soil.

Lyreleaf Sage

(Salvia lyrata)

Description: Low-growing, spreading with distinctive lyre-shaped leaves and spikes of purple to blue flowers. Attracts: Bees and butterflies are attracted to the nectar of the flowers. Prefers: Lyreleaf Sage thrives in partial shade to full sun and prefers moist, well-drained soil.

“The courses were very hands-on. We would go out to various habitats in this area and look at soils, vegetation, hydrology, and any wildlife that were utilizing the site. That technical understanding really provided the basis for me as a restoration ecologist.”

Robert George, MES ’13 Life scientist, US Environmental Protection Agency