Earth Day, an annual event first held on April 22, 1970, has grown to include a wide range of events that together involve over a billion people in more than 193 countries. We had the pleasure of celebrating Earth Day this year by creating an interactive landscape for the children at Philadelphia’s The Caring Center. This was spearheaded by the nonprofit Kids Gardening organization as part of their larger initiative to get children outside more. The popular animation studio Dreamworks also played a large role in the collaboration, incorporating elements of their children’s show Gabby’s Playhouse into the theme and providing funding.
Earth Day, an annual event first held on April 22, 1970, has grown to include a wide range of events that together involve over a billion people in more than 193 countries. We had the pleasure of celebrating Earth Day this year by creating an interactive landscape for the children at Philadelphia’s The Caring Center. This was spearheaded by the nonprofit Kids Gardening organization as part of their larger initiative to get children outside more. The popular animation studio Dreamworks also played a large role in the collaboration, incorporating elements of their children’s show Gabby’s Playhouse into the theme and providing funding.
Kids Gardening, who spearheaded all of this, has been doing projects like these all over the country since its founding in 1982. In addition, they’ve also provided educational resources to schools and parents, hoping to equip them with everything necessary to spark the imagination and creativity of future generations. In 2020 alone, Kids Gardening helped over 2.6 million children do exactly that, awarding over 160 thousand dollars in funding to over 225 different programs across the country. Impressive!
The Caring Center, where the project was installed, is a warm and inviting space for young children to enhance their learning and get quality care. It’s highly respected in the West Philadelphia community for employing locals and providing valuable resources to the younger population. This may be why it’s been designated a STAR 4 (the highest possible) by Pennsylvania’s Keystone STARS Early Childhood Learning Initiative, a component of the Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL) designed to improve, support, and recognize the continuous quality improvement efforts of early learning programs in the state of Pennsylvania.
Some of us have great spots to spend the night outside right in our backyard. This is the perfect idea for parents trying to keep their kid’s summer vacation going even after returning from the shore. It’s a great way to prepare your kids for future camping trips and begin to enamor them with nature. A small group of trees at the corner of your property can become the space your kids make the most memories.
Planting large trees over 15’ tall or 2-3 inches around is always a bit of an adventure. They can easily weigh over 2,000 pounds and require heavy machinery to move around. Since dropping a tree while moving or unloading it will often ruin its chances of survival, the process can be very anxiety-inducing. Then there are the holes too, which may need to be dug four or five feet wide and two to three feet deep. Digging those, especially by hand, is no easy task. And when there are old tree stumps or large roots in the area, like there were in this location, it’s even harder. So while we were able to get it done in one day, it took two supervisors and ten laborers working overtime to do so!
In the end, everything came together beautifully and everyone involved was thrilled with the new landscape. The final unveiling on Earth Day went off without a hitch, opening with speeches from Caring Center representatives, Emily Shipman of Kids Gardening, and our very own John McCaughey, owner of Terren Landscapes. As the day went on, we were overjoyed to see the children planting pumpkin seeds in the raised beds and playing around the fruit trees, which they’ll now have a chance to watch grow as they themselves grow alongside it. As landscapers, it doesn’t get much more fulfilling than that!
Take a look at the photographs below to see the before and after, and check out both Kids Gardening and The Caring Center when you get a moment–you may find them worth contributing to yourself!
