Urban Forest Renewal

Urban Forest Renewal Class at Friends School

Govans Urban Forest

The Urban Forest Renewal class, co-taught by Jessica Garman and Josh Carlin, sends a group of Upper School students out to local parks and forests. They've submitted proposals for art projects at Robert E. Lee Park, visited urban green spaces, and read a lot about the challenges and opportunities regarding urban forestry and lumber. There's much more on their blog, Urban Forest Renewal, entirely written by students in the class. You can also read more of their reflections after the jump.

Guest Student Post: Maddy Shay on Environmental Summer Research

I asked Maddy Shay,class of 2015, to  write a post about her involvement with the Environmental Summer Research Experience for Young Women at Roland Park Country School first as a participant in 2013 and then again as a Teaching Assistant in 2014. Even though this isn't a Friends School program, students from Friends School regularly participate.

Maddy writes:

The goal of the Environmental Summer Research Experience for Young Women is to investigate environmental anomalies, particularly ones involving soil, while educating young girls on various scientific skills in both the field and the lab. The program starts with a biota survey that takes about a week and a day out of the three week program. This is when groups divide up between four sites and collect as much data as possible from their site having to do with the chemicals in the soil, plant populations, and presence of arthropods. Keep reading for more details and links to the work she produced after the jump!

Asters and Goldenrod and Beardtongue (Oh My!) or: A Short History of Conservation and Native Plants Teaching Gardens at Friends School

Asters and Goldenrod and Penstemon Digitalis (Beardtongue) on the Upper School Steps

Curious about how Friends has come to have landscaping that is as ecologically sensitive as it is beautiful? Here's a great history (with pictures) written by Kay McConnell & Julie Moir Messervy about their work on campus. Here's a brief sample from that piece in which Kay describes how Friends administrators collaborated with Guilford Garden Club to get the process rolling:

Together, we agreed upon a plan for GGC members to design garden spaces, shop for locally grown native plants, and supervise the school community on planting days. Lower School science teacher David MacGibeny wrote a series of grants to the Chesapeake Bay Trust, and with CBT support and an investment of both dollars and elbow grease by the school, 3,750 native trees, shrubs, grasses, ferns, and perennials have been planted over the past five years. Another 700 have been sold at three campus native plant sales to be planted in home gardens.

And here's a gallery on the Baltimore Sun featuring Kay McConnell and Friends School landscaping. We'll ask Kay to write an update soon--these gardens are still going strong, but there are many new exciting projects as well.

New Logo Announced!

We have a new logo!

We're excited to use this logo around campus and on the web. Many many thanks to Upper School student Nat Werkheiser who created the design as part of Upper School Art teacher Ben Roach's digital design class. After the council approved Nat's design and offered additional feedback, Ben Roach made final adjustments in consultation with Upper School English teacher and sustainability council member Joshua Ratner.

We really like the design. It was important to the council that the design would be recognizable as unique to Friends School (building silhouettes) while still incorporating elements that everyone thinks of as related to sustainability--things like cycles, trees, the color green, etc.... We think the mix of grey buildings and green trees, along with the four arrows in the circle, will convey to visitors and to members of our community that Friends School cares about sustainability. Great job Nat!

If you're advertising an event that has a sustainable element to it, please let us know at sustainability@friendsbalt.org and we can send  you the logo.