In Southwest Philadelphia is something beautifully unexpected: the nation’s oldest surviving botanic garden. Bartram’s Garden is a 45-acre national landmark and public space, sprawling along the Schuylkill River in the Kingsessing neighborhood. The Garden is [continue reading…]
Darnell Drayton didn’t know anything about landscaping or gardening before joining the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s (PHS) Roots to Re-entry program. Drayton (pictured above) just wanted something to do while in prison. “I didn’t want to [continue reading…]
Twenty-seven-year-old Atiba Ellerby is a part-time barista and full-time urban farmer. When he’s not making coffee at The Pharmacy, a coffee shop in Point Breeze, he is tending to gardens throughout the city. Farming is [continue reading…]
https://vimeo.com/92712823] Urban farms all over Philadelphia indicate that many people in the city seek control over the produce and livestock they eat. The concept behind this control is food sovereignty, which asserts that local communities [continue reading…]
Over the summer, Bartram’s Garden hosted a meeting to get community feedback on the Bartram’s Mile, a stretch of trail that would connect Bartram’s to the Schuylkill River Trail that currently ends around South Street. [continue reading…]
People from across the city are constantly working towards making the Schuylkill and Delaware waterfronts better for Philadelphia. From revitalizing the rivers themselves to improving the green spaces around them, here are five people making [continue reading…]
United By Blue is a clothing store and café that focuses on keeping oceans and waterways clean and beautiful through community cleanups and sustainable business practices. While the storefront officially opened in the fall of [continue reading…]
Though residents of Southwest Philadelphia deal with tough issues like urban blight, gun violence and food deserts, individuals and organizations are working to improve the neighborhoods. Dozens of community churches and daycare centers line the [continue reading…]
https://vimeo.com/89486763] Southwest Philadelphia either contains or is directly surrounded by almost 1,200 acres of preserved natural land. The John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, west of the Eastwick neighborhood, takes up 1,000 acres. Mt. [continue reading…]
Southwest Philadelphia’s ethnic, racial, and cultural landscape has transformed in the past 25 years. From 1990-2010, the white population in the Elmwood neighborhood decreased from about 21,000 to 2,500, while the African-American population rose from 6,500 to [continue reading…]
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