By the staff of The Schuylkill Center

Published on November 14, 2007
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Throughout The Schuylkill Center’s 42-year history, the nature center has maintained its commitment to environmental issues locally and globally by adapting both its programs and mission to reflect a broad scope of environmental education. This has included everything from land restoration and conservation to watershed protection, wildlife rehabilitation and, most recently, renewable energy and sustainability.

Today, The Schuylkill Center is continuing to build on its approach to integrative environmental education through onsite sustainability exhibits. Chief among these is a green roof measuring roughly 2,200 square feet. This vegetated roof system was installed in the form of a two-inch-deep flower carpet on the facility’s largest rooftop in June of 2005.

Since that time, The Schuylkill Center’s staff has embraced its green roof as an opportunity to increase professional partnerships and community involvement. Programmatic partners now working with The Center to utilize its green roof as a demonstration site include the Philadelphia Water Department, Montgomery County Conservation District, and local architects and landscape designers. Outreach efforts, meanwhile, have expanded to offer tours concerning stormwater management for groups like the Green Woods Charter School located onsite, visitors at the 1 st Annual Family Energy Festival, and participants in numerous teacher workshops.

In July, for example, The Schuylkill Center hosted 25 teachers for a day-long workshop featuring guest speaker Charles Miller, founder and president of Roofscapes, Inc. and designer of the nature center’s green roof. Miller explained the many advantages and challenges of having a vegetated roof system. Then, a tour of The Center’s green roof allowed everyone to observe its slope, diversity of plant life, and connection to an outdoor rain garden. Participants in the seminar later worked in groups to complete activities that were illustrative of the functions and benefits of green roofs.

One activity required participants to calculate percolation rates for different surfaces on the nature center’s property, such as compacted soil, pavement and gravel. Another involved temperature measurements at various locations to record how microclimates can affect metropolitan, suburban, and rural areas differently. And a third exercise gave participants the opportunity to examine the space around their own schools to determine just how much a vegetated roof system could transform both the water cycle and the temperature in their own hometown.

In short, these 25 educators learned that green roofs, with a little creative thinking, can provide ample learning opportunities for everyone. From plant physiology and insect habitat to the broader picture of environmental pressures, green roofs act as microcosms for learning. The Schuylkill Center looks forward to showcasing its green roof in the future and sharing these lessons with even more teachers and its peers in the environmental community.

The Schuylkill Center’s green roof was constructed using grant money provided by The McLean Contributionship. Its teacher workshop was made possible by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The Schuylkill Center was founded in 1965 as one of the first nature centers in the country to be located within the limits of a major metropolitan city. Today, its 340 acres make up the largest privately-owned green space in Philadelphia. For more information about The Schuylkill Center, including its new 10-kilowatt solar panel array made possible by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, please visit www.SchuylkillCenter.org or call (215) 482-7300.