ANOTHER OPINION: The City’s Missing Green

BY FAYE DECKTER, Historic City Gardens. While Philadelphia continues to move ahead in areas of the green movement such as LEED buildings, recycling, solar recycling bins, and decorated trash-collection trucks, budget cuts are hitting other portions. Additionally, some areas of Philadelphia’s greening continue to lag behind other localities and need improvement.

Current cuts are hitting the tree-planting program hard. Philadelphia’s recommended tree cover is 40%, yet as of last year, our tree cover was about 15%. Last year, we were in the lower one-third of a sampling of major cities, according to a survey taken of internet sites and emails to cities’ tree planting organizations. Prior to the cuts, 200 trees were planted this summer in South Philly, for example, but according to a representative from East Passyunk Crossing Civic Association’s Greening Committee, only half of them survived. Some possible causes are the hot summer; improper watering; initial lack of viability; and shock from the balmy nursery conditions to harsh city conditions which include dog poop, trash/garbage, invasive weeds and the ubiquitous radiation from our many cell-phone towers, antennae and wireless.

Stronger legislation and enforcement is needed regarding littering and our Dog Pooper Law, including outlawing use of public spaces like schools, rec centers and Kelly Drive’s Lincoln Memorial as doggie-poop parks.

Despite the fact our public park system has been grossly underfunded for years now, a 3% decrease in the parks budget has occurred.

Lot maintenance is another area being hit by cuts. The result will be a proliferation of weeds around the city. While there has been some consideration of the use of grazing animals like sheep to do the job, another idea is that owners of vacant lots be required to maintain their spaces.

While California has established a statewide School Gardening Program, neither Pennsylvania nor Philadelphia has a program. Representatives should attend such conferences as the recent National Children & Youth Garden Symposium.

Philadelphia needs an inventory of city trees in order to manage them. We commend UC Green for tracking some West Philly trees. In contrast, Chicago already has embarked on a citywide program.

At our public places like schools and rec centers, staff is not trained in how to maintain outdoor spaces and may be hired without relevant job experience. We suggest staff be trained in the basics like proper mowing, identification and elimination of invasive plants, pruning, etc. and prior experience be considered in hiring. At schools, staff disinterested in outdoor spaces should be transferred to schools without green areas.

Funders of the Arts need to become cognizant that garden design, perhaps the oldest artform on the continent, should be included on lists of the arts.

Organizations like ours, Historic City Gardens, which has been in existence for 10 years now and produces unique concept gardens and whose goal is a community based 55-acre botanical garden at Lemon Hill and Porters House properties, should meet with the Director of Sustainability and be included in the Green Plan.

Historic City Gardens can only hope that when the economy improves greening “what green originally meant“ will be given greater consideration.

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