Schuylkill Center gift shop gives you a green Christmas
With only days to go before the Christmas holiday, you might still have a few presents left on your shopping list. Have no fear, the Schuylkill Center is here …
... With a great gift shop filled with sustainable, surprising and fun items for the whole family. For kids, you’ll find stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes: coyotes, owls, frogs, even Christmas bears. We’ve got a wide range — and many of them croak and sing as well. There’s children’s books, puzzles, games, trucks made from recycled plastic and on and on. Some of these make great stuffing stockers — what child doesn’t want a stuffed penguin in his or her stocking? (Speaking of stocking stuffers, don’t miss the “reindeer dust” by the cash register, a gift that only increases the Christmas magic.)
But there’s a ton of great presents for adults as well, starting with local honey and honey products of all kinds, including honey-based salad dressing, lip balm, skin lotion and more. As we’ve written about the struggles bees are having in the world before, supporting local beekeepers would be a great gift back to nature.
We’ve got tasty (I can vouch for this) shade-grown coffee, perfect for bird lovers, as coffee grown in a tropical forest understory, underneath other already-existing trees — as opposed to a coffee monoculture where the trees have been removed — allows migrating songbirds in Central and South America to use the forest habitat while the coffee is being grown. In fact, our sustainable coffee brand has roasts named for various birds — I’m a big fan of the scarlet tanager roast. Better, pair your coffee with a clay mug, of which we have many shapes, sizes and colors.
Speaking of birds, there are bird feeders of all kinds — I’m writing this watching darkeyed juncos, a cousin of sparrows, feast on my own squirrel-proof feeder bought at the gift shop — plus birding field guides, pouches to carry field guides in and, without question, the best bird seed this side of a natural forest. People drive from miles around to score our bird seed.
On top of this, there is a wide selection of jewelry, pottery, arts and crafts, even books that keep you current on a variety of environmental issues, especially climate change. A jigsaw puzzle geek, I’m eying a few 1,000-piece puzzles to give to myself.
And if you become a member of the Schuylkill Center, we’ll even give you a discount on all of this.
There is a small movement to offer experiences instead of physical gifts, and the Schuylkill Center can help you here, too. Why not give your loved one(s) a walk in our Pine Grove and sit in a magical pine forest, watching the birds around you? Or a walk to Wine Dance Pond? Or make a donation to our Wildlife Clinic in their honor, your gift giving life-saving care to songbirds, birds of prey, squirrels, opossums and so much more — some 150 species of critters have come to our facility over the last 30 years.
But this experiential gift giving can apply to the dozens of neighborhood nonprofits that work every day to improve the quality of life here. Happily, Roxborough and Manayunk are blessed with an abundance of organizations like the Schuylkill Center, so memberships and walks with Friends of the Wissahickon or support for the North Light Community City are two of the many ways you might give a gift while giving back to your neighborhood.
With only days to the holiday, consider a gift that not only delights the recipient but makes the world a better place. Consider shopping at the Schuylkill Center.
And Merry Christmas.