Winners:

Stephon Mumford caught the first fish of the day at 8:04 AM, and James Giles caught the last, in the final minute of the competition!

The prize for most fish caught went to Gary Thomas, who reeled in a whopping 18 fish! James Giles was the runner-up with 11 fish, followed closely by 4-year-old Nora who brought in 10!

Stephon Mumford won for biggest fish with a 24-inch catfish. Allegedly Ka-Ron Thomas caught an American eel that was “like 3 feet,” which was not measured or photographed, but earned Ka-Ron the prize for weirdest fish. Nafis Zollicoffer and Lucy Mercorella hauled in the next two largest catfish, and Lucy’s was her first ever catch!

The smallest fish, a 3.5-inch emerald shiner, was caught by the smallest angler, August.

It was a beautiful and exciting morning, and heartwarming to see experienced anglers helping first-timers to catch their first fish. We’re grateful to Coach Todd of Mid-Atlantic Youth and Outdoors Partners for coming out to help identify, measure, and release all those fish!

The post 2023 Southwest Fish-Off appeared first on Bartram's Garden.

As part of our efforts to offer free river activities like boating and fishing, Valerie, Ammarava, and the rest of the river program team carefully monitor the water quality in the Tidal Schuylkill River to ensure that river conditions are safe for recreation. Our data about bacterial and nutrient levels in the river, combined with records about recent rainfall, helps inform our safety practices for public recreation like boating. We also share our findings to advocate for improved protections of the river’s health and water quality.

And though the Schuylkill River’s health has improved dramatically in recent decades, unfortunately, our team still regularly cancels recreational programs owing to unsafe conditions caused by overflows of the city’s combined sewer system, which can introduce sewage and other pollutants into the river after significant rainfall or because of wastewater coming from suburban or industrial origins. Speaking alongside experts from PennEnvironment and regional elected officials, Valerie and Ammarava shared the impact these overflows can have on our free river recreation programs as well as how we use our water quality monitoring to keep visitors and staff safe. Read more in coverage from KYW News Radio and the Philadelphia Inquirer, or check out our data yourself to learn more about the health of the river.

Above: Ammarava sharing details of how the Garden’s water quality monitoring programs keep visitors and staff safe during river recreation on the Tidal Schuylkill River. Photo courtesy Alexandra Venth.

The post River Staff Featured by PennEnvironment appeared first on Bartram's Garden.

Coming Soon to 56^th Street

Have you heard? A new Ecosystems Education Center and Freshwater Mussel Hatchery will be built at Bartram’s Garden within the next few years.

Native freshwater mussels are not the kinds of mussels that we eat, but each adult mussel can filter up to 20 gallons of water per day while creating a nutrient-rich riverbed to help prevent erosion and support healthy conditions for other plants and animals. Thanks to regulations, scientific research, and dedicated residents throughout the region, rivers like the Schuylkill and the Delaware are now healthy enough to support a range of plants and animals, including native mussels. The new hatchery, led by Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, will raise up to 500,000 mussels per year to be restored throughout our local streams, wetlands, and waterways, where they can then use their natural filtering to help clean the water even further.

The adjacent Ecosystems Education Center will create a new home for hands-on, year-round learning, making, and sharing at Bartram’s Garden thanks to a teaching kitchen and flexible indoor and outdoor classroom spaces.

A collaborative team of local leaders, staff members, and Board members from both organizations selected the Philadelphia-based architecture firm WRT Design to design the new building. These initial renderings were shared at a public Zoom meeting on June 1 and will continue to be refined this year.

Questions or ideas? Contact info@bartramsgarden.org to let us know what you think!

The post “Coming Soon to 56th Street” appeared first on Bartram's Garden.

In the days of the Clean Water Act, the Lower Schuylkill River was a hub of industry and development. Many point sources of pollution have since been shut down or heavily regulated, but the image of a polluted and inhospitable river are still pervasive throughout Philadelphia. Bartram’s Garden, a 45-acre National Historic Landmark, is challenging these negative perceptions by engaging thousands of visitors per season in free recreation and river science programs.

River programs at Bartram’s Garden are centered around the Community Boathouse, which opened in 2015. April through October, the Garden offers Saturday free boating, last Wednesday free fishing, moon row-boating and more. “The Boathouse first came about because our River Programs Manager, Danielle Redden, partnered with the Garden for a community River Fest that offered free boat rides,” says Chloe Wang, River Programs Coordinator at Bartram’s Garden. “Hundreds of people lined up, and many were from the local neighborhood. There was clear demand when the opportunity was offered, which highlighted the need to address barriers to physical access.” The program’s success has been indisputable, demonstrated by thousands of participants and hundreds of volunteers willing to donate their time for the sake of public access.

While conditions and water quality of the Lower Schuylkill have improved dramatically in the last few decades, there is one persistent source of pollution: combined sewer overflows (CSOs). “We have 40 combined sewer outfalls on our section of the river, which is tidal so it flows both ways,” says Chloe. “This is a frequent reason that we cancel programming because we cancel our Saturday program within 24 hours of rainfall.” There is currently very little agency- or research institution-led monitoring of the Lower Schuylkill River, where Bartram’s Garden runs one of the few public docks. To address the lack of monitoring and consequent lack of action by agencies to address the persistent CSOs, Bartram’s Garden decided to start collecting their own data with volunteers and high school students whose love for the river had grown through their involvement in existing education and recreation programs.

Joanne Douglas has been working with Bartram’s Garden since 2017. As the Watershed Interpretation & Youth River Programs Manager, Joanne works to create inclusive student programs that often serve as participants’ first introduction to conservation and environmental justice as a career path. “Many of the students we work with live along the river in Philadelphia and are from communities that will be impacted by climate change immediately,” says Joanne. “They are also, of course, younger and not able to vote or get as engaged politically in ways that adults can.”

In August of 2019, Joanne and Chloe engaged Alice Baker (formerly of PennFuture) and Gayle Killam (formerly of River Network) to consult on a letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the Delaware River Basin Commission. This launched a multi-step collaboration among staff, students, and volunteers to secure greater protections for the beloved Lower Schuylkill River. “Alice and Gayle offered training to me and Joanne to help us understand the landscape of water policy for our specific context, which was really illuminating and changed the way that I understand the river and the structures that govern it,” says Chloe. Joanne agrees, stating that “the collaboration was so important because [Gayle and Alice] know policy and what agencies to go to in order to make change, which would have taken hours to figure out on our own.”

Chloe managed the volunteer writing and data collection process, while Joanne worked with the students over multiple workshops to write their portion of the letter. “The students chose to do the introduction and talk about the youth program and make the asks,” explains Joanne. “It was a funny time! One student suggested that we start the letter with a compliment because that’s what he does when he asks his dad for money.” Joanne led these student workshops with openness, listened to students’ ideas and guided the writing process toward the final version. The synthesized letter compels the reader to protect the Lower, tidal, Schuylkill on behalf of the students, volunteers, and program participants who now have access to recreational activities on the river.

“Our boating program is a free community activity on Saturdays where anyone can come and spend the day on the river. We prioritize being inclusive of all, regardless of age, experience, or ability. Our River Crew of young adults practice rowing boats and teach young kids, adults and families to row. Because we serve such a wide range of participants, from very young children to older adults whose immune systems may be weaker, the risk of health impacts from impaired water quality is of primary concern.”

Read the full letter from Bartram’s Garden to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

River Network is thrilled at the outcome of this partnership with Bartram’s Garden and PennFuture. Through this letter-writing process, the staff at Bartram’s Garden effectively trained and empowered students and volunteers to demand greater protections from their local agencies. When asked about goals and next steps for this novel student- and volunteer-driven advocacy project, both Joanne and Chloe expressed great pride in seeing participants take an active role in protecting their local watershed. In the future, Joanne would like to see “returning students who eventually go off on their own and [continue to] engage civically.” Chloe describes this project as “an experiment in making knowledge production more democratic.” Like Joanne and Chloe, we are excited to watch this program expand as it continues to provide river access to Philadelphians and empower communities to expect more from their governing agencies.

The post A Letter from Bartram’s Garden to the PA Department of Environmental Protection appeared first on Bartram's Garden.

“Bliss described walking Feb. 22, 1884 from the Blockley Hospital (roughly the modern UPenn hospital complex), down the Darby Road and past Gray’s Ferry. The Episcopal Theological Seminary that Bliss mentions was between 50th and 51st along the east side of Woodland in the 1880s. So the ‘long lane‘ he and his companion ‘V’ [another resident doctor in the hospital] turned down towards the river might very likely have been either the Bartram/Carr/Eastwick entry lane or Hay/Gibson lane (partially preserved in modern Vodges Street).

“Looking across the river, he says he could see the refineries (Point Breeze) and two huge grain elevators (Girard Point), and then across the south Philadelphia marshes to see ships on the Delaware. He then walked back, ‘going down a railroad track towards the City’ – that was probably the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore. The ‘handsome mansion, built in English-manor style‘ on a knoll above the river might then have been the Eastwick house—if he was walking along the railroad bed, Bartram Hall would have been on the right—but that probably means he walked down Hay Lane/Gibson Lane to the river, so below 56th Street. The mansion with windows closed and boarded up, and many places plastering fallen from the walls, sounds like the Eastwick House in 1884.

“Interesting he says there was a large sign facing the railroad ‘which threatened all the law’s penalties upon anyone who ventured within the high, briar-covered stone wall enclosing the estate.’ That very much sounds like the Eastwick estate, and several similar accounts from the 1880s say there were no trespassing signs all over the estate, but people were always sneaking in. Andrew Eastwick died in 1879, so the estate had only been abandoned for five years in 1884—so quite an exaggeration on the decay and neglect.”

“Even when the Bartram Park was opened in 1891, the rest of the surrounding Eastwick estate was fenced off with no trespassing sign to keep people out of the vicinity of the Eastwick mansion.”

———————————————————————-

Top Image: James Fuller Queen (1820/1821–1886) painted Grays Ferry Looking South in 1858 depicting steamboats and barges on the Schuylkill River, with a marsh in the foreground. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The post Bartram History: A River Walk in 1884 appeared first on Bartram's Garden.