| West Ward beautification |
On Friday, June 11, Edge of the Woods Native Plant Nursery www.edgeofthewoodsnursery.com/ arrived at the 600 block of Northampton Street with a truck full of native perennials, and a trailer of tools and mulch. The day before, co-workers Sue, Liz, and Zach with help from Cindy Adams, this year’s West Ward Neighborhood Partnership’s landscape architect intern from Philadelphia University, spent the day preparing the beds to receive the plants. By Friday afternoon with the help of dedicated neighborhood volunteers, 14 beds, along the 600 block of Northampton Street, seven on the north side and seven on the south side, were planted, watered, and mulched.
Preschoolers from Community Services for Children, located near the corner of Locust Street on the 600 block of Northampton, have been learning about seeds and plants and how they grow through a program provided by the School of Natural Learning http://www.schoolofnaturallearning.org/ . Early this spring, children grew nasturtiums from seed and then planted the seedlings in four
flowers urns on their block. On Friday the children watered and mulched the new perennials that will grow in the green border in front of their classroom. School children from ACJC Day Care Center, also located on the 600 block of Northampton, had an early release from school on Friday. These 6 to 10 year olds were able to plant, water and mulch. the native perennials in the green border near their day care center. Click on the link to see a video of the children from Express Times reporter Bill Adams http://videos.lehighvalleylive.com/express-times/2010/06/west_ward_beautification.html
Once the native perennial flowers take hold they will come back every year to beautify the block with spring, summer, and fall blooms. The perennials will also help to absorb water run-off during storms, keeping excess storm water from the entering our creek and rivers and helping to deter flooding. The planting of the native perennials is part of the West Ward Neighborhood Partnership’s Urban Ecology Project, which along with water monitoring, community gardens, tree planting and green street borders, seeks to improve the neighborhood’s environment for the enjoyment of West Ward residents.
Improvements to the 600 block of Northampton Street are grant funded and supported by funds from the Easton Hospital and Lafayette Ambassador Bank.
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18 comments:
Thanks for posting this, Joanne! It's great to see kids having fun, getting dirty and learning about nature, even in an urban environment...
This is an important development. Native landscaping is more sustainable, because the plants are acclimated to the climate, require less water, and once established, will need very little care. Native plants also sustain native insects and birds in ways that exotics cannot.
Once these plants are established, they will fill out the space, shading out weeds. So the end result will be beautiful. Far better than grass, which needs to be mowed and is conducive to weeds.
Kudos to everyone involved in this effort, which will have a long term positive impact on the West Ward.
not to be a wet blanket, but that block has a lot of run down apts and trash all over. planting flowers is a nice 'feel good' measure, but if it isn't maintained and kept clean, it'll look like crap in the future, like a lot of the corner flower pots which are full of trash and weeds.
What the heck is going on? I hope tax dollars didn't pay for this project. Sure its great to see kids get involved but really, how long do you think these plants are going to last. Every person that parks there will be walking all over them. Some are nothing more than a branch.
anon 4:36 I couldn't agree more. I lover these native plants but this isn't the place. They will be destroyed. How unfortunate. I am sure they could have planted them in other areas --
Anon:8:45 and 4:36
I agree that it does seem a bit eccentric to plant perennial flowers alongside a street, but if we never did anything that appeared crazy, many innovations that we take for granted today, would never have been attempted. The money used for the native plants, came from funds provided by Easton Hospital and Lafayette Ambassador Bank. The planting of native perennials is part of the Urban Ecology Project which is supported by a grant from the Wachovia Regional Foundation. Revitalizing the 600 block of Northampton Street is an ongoing effort. You may have noticed the new street lamps, green borders and sidewalks that went in last fall. Recently 5 new native trees were planted and hopefully six more will go in tomorrow. (The trees are grant funded.)The intention is to continue the effort of downtown and Main Street into the West Ward. Why shouldn’t this be the place? We live in a beautiful, culturally diverse, historic city. Why not make it even more so with plants and trees.
The gateways to our neighborhood (15th and Butler, 13th and Rte 22 and the 600 block) are the first clue visitors get as to what to expect when they enter the West Ward. Progress can be slow, but it is being made as evidenced by work on the 600 block and the corner of 13th street and Northampton where Mr. Patel is putting finishing touches, complete with landscaping, to the new gas station and convenience store.
Oops, in the interest of full disclosure, I am Sophia Feller and I work for the West Ward Neighborhood Partnership. The above post is my response to comments concerning my original blog post. I am posting from my home computer, "Fia" is my nickname.
Well chosen native plants are tough, tougher than grass or annuals. They can be stepped on, neglected, and generally abused, but will still come up looking beautiful year after year.
Not, of course, if they get torn out, but natives, which grow deep roots, are less likely to be torn out than annual plants such as petunias, marigolds, and begonnias. Have you ever tried to pull out lowbush blueberries, barberry, or lavender? Not easy. Contrast these natives with overused exotics like begonnias, which require inordinate amounts of water, and make up the industrial monoculture that is crowding out the natives and starving birds and insects that depend on native plants for sustanance.
In sum, native plants are the practical, sustainable alternative, not a foolish luxury.
I will see in four weeks and let you know my thoughts
Anon 11:07 . . .
Ya gotta give them more than 4 weeks! Perennials take a year to establish. Good things come to those who wait.
Not to mention that this is great programming for the kids--CSC and School of Natural Learning are great organizations and it's nice to see them working together with the WWNP to teach our neighborhood's kids to care about our streetscapes and to steward them. These kids will likely be adults living in our neighborhood within 10 years. I'm glad they are learning to be engaged citizens now, as well as the importance of integrated nature into urban landscapes.
Part One...
I am in full agreement that sustainable environments are desirable. I think the idea of getting kids involved at an early age in caring for and understanding their environment is key to developing long term cultural traditions towards stewardship of nature. I would caution though not to confuse native species with those tolerent of the urban environment...they are not the same thing.
The place for this project would have been some nice quiet neighborhood lot where the kids could safely tend to their new hobby/learning experience without the hectic interference of Northampton Street's activities. There are plenty of places that need visual improvement that would have qualified. I agree with the many people who question placement of this project at the curbside for all the reasons already mentioned.
Having said this, there are cognitive problems in today's society with understanding the difference between the urban and the rural. I think suburbia is a major reason why this cognitive dissonance exists. This urban/rural conflict within environmentalism goes hand in hand with our issues surrounding historic preservation and what both movements reveal to us about our lack of understanding about where we live and who we are as a people.
This all gets back to my point about the difference between the urban and rural (their illigitimate child suburbia, which is neither one nor the other and with all the negative characteristics of both shall be left for another time).
Part Two to follow.
DRL
Part Two...
We must understand that human settlements are also eco-systems (aka the human habitat). Our's are called cities, towns and villages. They have different needs than nature and require different built environments. The main business street of a city must be understood as just that. It's functions and uses require a physical arrrangement that is surely not rural and introducing native species at heavily used curbs can not make it rural in any sense (in fact it mocks the truly rural) and shows a lack of understanding of the use of city streets.
I agree with Sophia that we need to honor the history and natural beauty of Easton. Unfortunately, we (among many other urban places in America) have amnesia as to how to go about this. I wish to address her rhetorical question about these plantings of "why not here?" The "City Beautiful Movement" of 1893-1918 was the height of civic design in this country. Despite being a much less affluent society then, the town builders of that era understood that we must honor our civic and cultural institutions with buildings and public spaces worthy of Democratic society's aspirations.
Today the environmental movement wants to impose a romanticized natural overlay onto an urban fabric that never had those attributes instead of recreating the formal rows of street trees and structured public parks that made the City Beautiful Movement successful.
Historic preservationsits - because we build so few structures of any architectural value today - have resorted to saving every outhouse and tenement apartment instead of demanding that new buildings be of equal quality to what we already have.
We need to stop imposing this naturalized/historicized falsehood onto our physical fabric and start paying closer attention to the realities of how cities function and what they should look like (that is to say, not the North Woods or Colonial Williamsburg).
I hope my comments are taken not as a harsh criticisn of the project but as a reminder that we need to start to better understand ourselves before imposing idealized landscapes that will not serve us well in the long run and create false expectations of what cities should be about.
DRL
Dennis and all - there are two daycares on that block CSC's and ACJC. Did you know these children have no other green space that they can walk to and look at plants - as you suggest? State law requires that teachers take children outside everyday. Quality accreditation authorities say the children need to be out for an hour a day. Our West Ward children have no where to go - that's green. Heroically some of the classes have been going up to Vanderveer - but that is quite a trek for 3-5 year olds - some with disabilities - and no access to a bathroom. And Vanderveer isn't all that green anyway. My childhood was filled with time outside, especially in the summer. How can we wonder why our children end up with learning problems when they spend hour after hour day after day in sealed rooms under florescent lights? And there is no need to wonder because research is outright correlating cognitive enhancement with being outside in natural settings.
There are green spaces around the learning centers but they are on private property or, if public (such as Dutchtown Park) they are not currently in a condition that is safe for children.
Also, Dennis - I get your points. The choice of natives could be wrong but lets see is what I think. If they thrive, that could be definitely eccentric and interesting. Something new in the world. We can honor the past, be practical and do something completely new at the same time. Certainly, the likelihood of getting ripped out and trashed on is about equal for all possible choices.
I stopped in on the day of the planting and the visual impression was remarkable. I don't know enough about plants to say one way or the other but perhaps we can look back at this and learn what works or doesn't work elsewhere.
Someone gave me a book some time ago.. 'The Pattern Language-- Towns, Buildings, Construction'. In the book is a lovely photo of row houses and how they may have looked some time ago. The combination of tall grasses, trees and fencing is very attractive. Of course, that was long ago.
Joanne...
I think the book you speak of is A PATTERN LANGUAGE by Christoper Alexander, now considered a must-read classic in urban planning circles.
Cathy...
I'm with you on the need to get kids out of the stifling building during the day. I work in a building that hosts Head Start in Bethlehem.
Seems to beg the question though, why were these locations approved for day care - especially on that stretch of Northampton - without accessible green space? Seems like a pretty sloppy planning approval process to me.
The plants obvioulsy have intrinsic value regardless of location. I'm not disputing it. My point about the context may need further explanation, which maybe we can do in person sometime. Briefly though, Northampton Street should be redeveloped to promote commerce, some residential and the general visual appeal desired by visitors.
To relate it to anatomy; the street grid, public spaces, building setbacks and massings are the skeleton and large muscles of the city's body. The building designs and landscape details are the small muscles and skin covering the muscle structure. Every street functions differently. We haven't figured out how to consistently do this "skin job" yet in ways that are appropriate to the specifics at hand.
That's probably as clear as mud.
DRL
Christopher Alexander certainly thinks that children have a place in the middle of life and that they should have access visual and otherwise to adults working. Do you think they should go somewhere else like out of the city to the suburbs where there is green space? And given that these programs are for lower income families should their parents get cars to drive them? How urban ecologic is that?
The question to beg is not why are those daycares there - it was the coming of those daycares that finally drove off most of the criminal activity that persisted on that block - not even the presence of the WWNP office across the street accomplished that. The question to beg is why we as a community do not think about quality of life issues for the young children who live here. All the daycares in Easton meet the state's standards - children can be walked up and down the street tied together. That meets the states standards. There are a few sunbaked asphalted plastic jungled jimed up parks they can walk to also. Those are not green spaces. Hugh Moore Park is a green space but there is no public transportation to it. I believe this lack of accessible safe green space for children is a community problem and that a town that has an Urban Ecology Project should address it.
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