By Tyler Fowler
From West Philadelphia east, from Somerton south, street to street and block to block you will find each neighborhood distinct from the last, with its own set of strengths and challenges, but one constant is the water people drink, bathe, and play in. Philadelphia sits between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. As such, it is situated in a major intersection of the Delaware River Basin, providing water to approximately 14.2 million people. The quality of this water is largely determined by the health of the watershed, which is impacted by the agricultural, industrial, and residential infrastructures and uses of communities, businesses and individuals hundreds of miles away from the water source and final destination. Those looking to reduce their impact on water quality should aim to foster a healthy relationship with the land they live on by thought, word, and deed; one should strive to be a good steward. This is achieved through a combination of environmental and spiritual education, intentional community outreach, engagement and relationship building, and tangible action.
In the Northwest Philadelphia neighborhood of Germantown, at the intersection of Germantown Avenue and High Street stands First United Methodist Church of Germantown, or FUMCOG for short. Founded in 1796, FUMCOG was among the first Methodist churches in America. Guided by the values and principles of the life of Jesus Christ, the church aims to care for all people through local and international ministries, which includes a focus on environmental, social and racial justice. Striving to be good stewards of the earth, FUMCOG has tackled numerous projects, including quite a few watershed Best Management Practices (BMP’s) that contribute to healthier waters and communities. A BMP is a voluntary conservation practice that helps protect soil and water resources. Some examples of BMPs include green infrastructure, buffer zones of trees, shrubs, and plants next to streams, culverts crossing streams, planting native trees, shrubs and meadows, community gardens, rain barrels, pollinator gardens, removing concrete, porous pavement, educational efforts, trash clean ups, and more.
The environmental justice initiatives of FUMCOG vary from supporting the Germantown Tree Tenders (a partner project of Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light which plants native trees throughout the neighborhood) with storage space and resources, a community garden which provides fresh vegetables to the Germantown Community Fridge on the southeast side of the building, providing volunteers to the Community Fridge, rain barrels, participating in native tree distributions, installing pollinator gardens, energy audits, and reviewing water and electricity use. In this post we highlight a few of the BMP’s FUMCOG has successfully implemented and maintained in the past few years, made possible by the passion and care of community members both in and outside of the congregation, like long time congregant Mark Smith.
Mark Smith has been a member of FUMCOG for 35 years. He is a self-taught gardener, and describes himself as an environmentalist with a focus on climate change. Despite growing up in rural Ohio and tending to his parents’ large vegetable garden as a young boy, his appreciation for nature did not blossom until later in life. He now attributes his awareness of and care for the built and natural environments to his past, and feels that his mission is to “create beauty”; he hopes that his work will help FUMCOG become “a beacon of physical beauty on the outside that will contribute to the betterment of the community.”
Grieving the loss of family farms and rural landscapes from childhood has been a catalyst for his intimate connection to land, which he grows and shares through his leadership, educational efforts and project planning, installation, and management. Mark is a founder of the Germantown Tree Tenders, a member of FUMCOG’s Climate Action Committee, and has served as a leader in the implementation and maintenance of the projects detailed here, although this is not an exhaustive list of the projects of FUMCOG and Mark Smith.
The Pollinator Garden
Like many big cities, Philadelphia struggles with flooding that is becoming increasingly frequent due to extreme storms and weather events caused by climate change and other environmental issues. Urbanization, deforestation and the conversion of natural pervious surfaces, like soil, rocks, and sand, to impervious surfaces, such as concrete, disrupts the watershed’s flow route, preventing rainwater from entering the ground and merging with the groundwater running its course to its final destination, the ocean. This leads to excessive and unmanageable runoff, which is often also polluted by litter, emissions and pollutants from cars, agricultural chemicals, and other sources. In discussing his concerns surrounding flooding, Mark points out that “the people who experience the most flooding in Philadelphia are the people with the least resources.” To minimize their impact, Mark worked to convert an empty plot of land at the end of their parking lot, often used as a dumping ground for trash, to a pollinator garden.
The benefits of installing a pollinator garden are varied, and the installation is relatively simple. Mark identified a problem (i.e. individuals dumping their trash on FUMCOG’s property) and learned in a seminar on trash that he should plant something in the plot because “if it looks like it’s being used, it won’t get dumped in.” He used wildflowers, plants from his home garden, and other native plants, to design and install the garden. By choosing to plant native flowers in the area, he beautified the property, and transformed a source of pollution into something that combats excessive runoff, supports the health of the local ecosystem and the healthy functioning of the watershed. Shortly after the installation the dumping stopped!
Pollinator gardens increase the biodiversity in an area, attract pollinators like moths, butterflies, and bees, and support soil health, making for a more productive ecosystem. In considering how supporting an abiotic process (like the flow of water) supports a biotic cycle (like pollination), the answer turns out to be as simple as it can get: a healthy watershed is dependent on a healthy ecosystem, and vice versa, so in supporting one you support the other!
If you are interested in planting your own pollinator garden, check out these guides:
- How to build a pollinator garden
- Planting Pollinator-Friendly Gardens
- Great Pollinator Plants for Pennsylvania
- Planting for Pollinators
The Community Garden
Another BMP that has a positive impact on the local ecosystem and water quality are community gardens! Gardens help to improve water and soil quality, increase biodiversity, improve water filtration, and reduce neighborhood waste.
Sitting vacant for years in the backyard of FUMCOG was one lone raised bed that had been installed by an educational group as a demonstration. Megan, the woman working at the neighboring daycare center, suggested to Mark that they utilize the space by installing four more beds as a teaching tool for the daycare students and for creating creation care content in the daycare curriculum.
The (very generalized) steps to install raised garden beds include: picking the site, selecting and gathering the materials, preparing the site, constructing the frames, and filling it with soil. The decisions you make along the way are determined by your geographic location, site location, and preferences. What kind of plants do you want to grow? How big would you like your yield to be? Will the bed(s) be resting on soil or concrete? All of these factors, and more, will determine the location and size of your bed(s). They should be positioned to receive at least 6 hours of daily sunlight, the ground under your beds should be leveled, and if you are building over soil, you should consider weed prevention methods. To prevent weeds, Mark recommends putting cardboard directly on the grass at the bottom of the bed.
Check out these guides for more in depth information on raised bed installation:
- The Complete Guide to Raised Beds
- How to Build a Raised Garden Bed for just $100
- How to Build Raised Garden Beds
- New Vegetable Garden: How To Get Started
Healthy plants grow in healthy soil, and garden maintenance is essential in supporting soil health. Garden maintenance includes watering, thinning, mulching, fertilizing, cultivating, weeding, and pest and disease control. The Community Fridge Gardener’s, the caretakers of the community garden, are an official member of the Philadelphia Horticultural Society’s (PHS) City Harvest Community Garden division. As such, FUMCOG is supplied with compost which they use as fertilizer by working it into the top couple of inches of soil. At the end of each season they add leaves as soil cover to protect from erosion, weeds, and temperature extremes.
Check out these links for garden care and maintenance tips:
At the time of the installation, FUMCOG was already supporting the Germantown Community Fridge on the southeast side of the church grounds. It only made sense to connect the two projects. Why not use the fresh vegetables grown behind the church to stock the community fridge only a couple hundred feet away? Thus, the Community Fridge Gardeners became a part of the Germantown Community Fridge! The group is made up of volunteers from the church and surrounding community who take responsibility for the maintenance, planting, and harvesting of the garden, and for the stocking of the community fridge.
Mark describes the relationship between the garden and the fridge as symbiotic. He says that there is nothing fresher to stock the fridge with than the garden vegetables, “…being grown 100 feet away, harvested and stocked in the same day.”
When prompted to give advice to those interested in building a community garden in their area, he shared, “Start with your own enthusiasm, try to find anybody who is like minded, start small, and keep sharing.” He has learned to focus on long term sustainability in his projects, and has found that it is always best to plan projects that you could finish either by yourself or with a committed collaborator.
Much of his motivation to act comes from the desire to cultivate stronger relationships with the land we live on. For him, sustainability means building resiliency now for the struggles to come. This means re-learning the multitudes of ways we can care for the Earth, reconnecting with the soil, and rebuilding a relationship of reciprocity. It also means cultivating hope. Mark shares, “To live you have to have hope for the future, and that is a part of being good stewards from all of our faith traditions. You’re creating hope for another season seven generations down the road.”
Mark Smith and the Community Fridge Gardeners of FUMCOG are a wonderful example of land-based community care, rooted in care for all of Creation. Care for the Earth, and the Earth will care for you!