Love Your Park Day brings out scores of volunteers
The annual “Love Your Park Day” sponsored by the Phila. Parks & Recreation was a huge success this year, drawing thousands of environmentally concerned citizens across 75 of the city’s parks to help make a difference in our precious green spaces. The bulk of the efforts go toward clean ups, mulching, planting trees and creating flower beds.
Such was the case in two prime locations in our own backyard, with major clean and green projects organized at Gorgas Park and the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Preserve. Dozens of eco-conscious volunteers of all ages came out to dedicate their time on a comfortable Indian Summer Saturday to make an impact in our community that will reap benefits for years to come.
The Roxborough Manayunk Conservancy and the Friends of the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Preserve rolled up their sleeves in a joint effort at the Phila. Water Department’s Summit Ave. Pollinator Meadow. The goal of the endeavor was to plant 600 native herbaceous plants and dozens of trees in the swales of the meadow.
According to Tom Landsmann, President of the RMC, the meadows became a storm management basin about a decade ago. During those years, RMC stewards “have been transforming the site from a sterile area into an ecologically valuable zone. The edge of the meadow has been planted with 100’s of late, successional trees, Landsmann added that the game plan of the meadow edge “is a native upland forest that requires little maintenance. The goal for the stormwater swales is a meadow filled with various high value pollinator flowers that will provide bees, birds, and butterflies with a valuable food source.”
URRP President led the calvary at the Summit Meadow along with a special contribution from Emma Schad representing Refugia Design. Refugia is an environmentally friendly company that designs and builds landscapes that are eco-beneficial, beautiful,
and resilient. Volunteers, armed with shovels set out across the meadow inserting plants into, excuse the pun for The Charge of The Light Brigade fans, the “valley of the 600.” That’s how many herbaceous plants found new homes in the meadow basin that might require some delayed gratification to appreciate their long-range impact.
Further down the Ridge, Friends of Gorgas Park President John Boyce and his merry crew of intrepid adventurers, had equally lofty goals where the results were more visible to passersby. Besides a massive cleanup detail, several visually aesthetic flower beds were created near Ridge and Hermitage, while existing ones received a healthy coating of mulch and TLC.
All in all, throughout the city and in Roxborough specifically, nature lovers were given an opportunity to make a direct contribution to both the short and long-term appearance of popular green spaces and the paton-the-back feeling one can only get from knowing their efforts will bear fruit (sometimes literally) down the road.