Night Hike was awesome!
Nothing but rave reviews for an awesome program planned and carried out by Spark the Wave students! If you missed it be sure to join us next year!
Calling All Volunteers!!
Saturday, October 31st, Sunday, November 1st
Saturday, November 7th & 14th
Come anytime between 10am to 3pm
We’ll be planting lots of trees and shrubs along Penn’s Woods Trail and can use all the help we can get! Bring shovels and other large digging tools if you have them. Hope to see you there!
When Esta Schwartz moved into her sixth-floor condominium at the Philadelphian, the view was not its best selling point.
The condos in the front of the building look out onto the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the Art Museum, but her balcony, at the back, offered views of a black roof studded with large air-conditioning units.
Not anymore. Last week, workers began spreading dirt atop the roof, then planting it with sedum and other greenery that will be pink in June, ocher come November. Tall grasses will hide the air handlers.
“In some ways, it’s like a view out of a suburban window,” she said. Perhaps a third of the building’s condos now overlook, in effect, a huge lawn.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/science/20150422_Phila__roofs_are_sprouting_greenery.html#HmDdVpIU2KkOq5jx.99
Thursday evenings April 16, 23, 30, from 6:00 -9:00pm.
Chester Springs (33 minutes south of the Arboretum)
The PA Horticulture Society has offered to provide us with free trees if we have individuals with Tree Tender Training. The SAVE Alliance Foundation has offered to pay for anyone to take the training who agrees to complete the training and volunteer time to plant trees at the Althouse Arboretum. We can carpool from the Arboretum. How about it?
During three energetic sessions learn the basics of tree planting and care including tree biology, identification, stresses, planting , pruning and root care – and how to use these skills in your home landscape and in helping to restore the tree canopy in your neighborhood and the region. Skills to use at home too!
Register by this Monday by contacting khamilton@thesavealliance.org
Click here for more information about the Althouse Arboretum:
A map of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with its neighborhoods labeled. For use primarily in the list of Pittsburgh neighborhoods. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
With the flurry of national press Pittsburgh has been getting, we’d better step up the pace of hotel construction, get our spare bedrooms advertised on AirB&B and send a buzz through the network of couch surfers. We’re sure to get more company in the coming years.
Our little gem of a city has been at or near the top of lists of places to invest in and raise a family and that have the most public art, best housing prices, best cost of living, best view, most breathtaking entry point and best (and maybe most) neighborhoods.
But of all the lists I’ve seen, Pittsburgh’s status in a recent report by National Geographic makes me the proudest.
Of the cities featured in an article headlined “Nine Cities That Love Their Trees,” Pittsburgh was cited as having the greatest canopy among New York, Philadelphia, Austin, Detroit, Washington, Baltimore, Portland and Tampa.
Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Berks County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Most people walk through a park looking at what nature offers at eye level or lower to avoid tripping over roots or other natural features of the land.
But not Berks County Parks Director Clare W. Adams, a landscape architect.
She tends to see the beauty in the leaf canopy above her and wonder about the health of the trees.
She wants park visitors to be able to enjoy the view without having to worry about falling branches or trees.
English: Hurricane Irene over North Carolina, United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Met-Ed and PPL electric utilities have to improve their tree-trimming and line maintenance so that preventable outages like those that occurred during the major storms of 2011 can be reduced or eliminated.
The utilities also must be more responsive to customers during major storms, according to three reports critical of the utilities, issued this week by the state Public Utility Commission.
The reports were ordered in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene last August, flooding rains from the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee in early September, and the freak late October snowstorm.
“Tree trimming should be a primary concern for both the (electric utilities) and commission for its effect on reliability as well as its role in long-duration outages,” the report said.
Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Lancaster County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When the tree cutters arrive in August, 31 homeowners in the Eden Manor neighborhood of Lancaster city fear they essentially will be losing their backyards.
The 50-year-old homes, on Princess Anne Drive off Pitney Road, border a high-voltage power line that was built before the neighborhood.
Unfortunately for the homeowners, PPL has adopted a stricter policy of keeping its rights of way free of trees.
Trees that once were allowed to grow because they were not underneath the wires must now be taken down.
I have wondered about this for years. I did some research to see what is involved with a community becoming a Tree City USA.
Since Pottstown is the recipient of the Thomas Hylton Memorial Forest, one would think we would be at the top of the list! There are 114 Tree City USA communities in the state of Pennsylvania. They include: Boyertown, West Chester, Wyomissing, Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, Lancaster, Lower Merion, Philadelphia, Phoenixville, Reading, Pottsville and the list goes on.
Communities of varying sizes are on the list. The largest to the smallest municipalities are all represented, so size is not an issue.
There are four criteria:
I believe we have a tree board, a tree ordinance, we probably spend $40,000+ a year on tree care and we could always throw in an Arbor Day Observance.
The benefits are framework for action, education, public image, civic pride, financial assistance, publicity and there is a list of 15 more reasons to become a Tree City USA. The Tree City program is sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation in cooperation with the USDA Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters.
IMHO since we have all these trees why don’t we use them to our advantage? Just sayin…..
For more information: http://www.arborday.org/programs/treeCityUSA/index.cfm
In my Pottstown Herald article covering the last Shade Tree Commission meeting I reported that a property owner on Keim Street was having a major tree problem.
The property owner was told by the Shade Tree Commission that he would have to foot the bill to have a tree removed from his property. The offending tree was ready to fall onto Keim St. and had been hit twice by vehicles. The property owner is retired and did not have the funds to pay for a tree removal. He asked for assistance and was turned down by Mr. Hylton. The property owned said he could either pay his taxes or cut down the tree, but he could not do both.
Now the tree has been cut down and mysteriously paid for by an unknown source. I find that very interesting. Don’t you????
See my recent report on the Pottstown Shade Tree Commission and Trees Inc. in the Pottstown Herald.
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