Schenley Plaza, Three Years Later

On Friday I was lucky enough to take some photos of the WYEP Summer Music Festival from the Cathedral of Learning with an open window, thanks to a very nice WYEP volunteer.  When I got back to the office this week, I thought it’d be fun to compare Friday’s photo with one taken at the Plaza’s grand opening in June 2006.  And now I just have to share.

June 2006:

June 2009:

So many things have changed!  The one that really makes me smile is how big the London plane trees have gotten.  In the original photo, you can barely tell they’re trees, and now they’re so tall and beautiful. The heuchera (the dark red plants we used as groundcover) has really filled in. You can also see that in 2006, the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain was dry, and now it’s flowing and surrounded by even more green space than before.

But the biggest difference is the people.  This May, for the first time, Schenley Plaza welcomed more than 1,000 visitors a day on average.  People are continuing to discover this space, which gets lovelier every year and hosts even more diverse and exciting programs.  Thanks to our friends at WYEP for bringing local and national talent to the Plaza and drawing even more people to experience the park.

It really has been a fun three years watching the Plaza grow.

And just for fun, here’s how it looked SIX years ago, before it was transformed from a parking lot into a park.

Pretty awesome to see the difference.

* Thanks to Joshua Franzos for the 2006 aerial and to LaQuatra Bonci for the 2003 shot!

Eight Unsung Spots #2: Snyder’s Point in Riverview

This is the second in our series of Unsung Spots in the Parks.

Click here for a full map and directions!

The most common question I’m asked about Riverview Park, either by people who’ve never visited or those who have been there many times, is “Where’s the river view?”  Back when the park was created in 1894, it was composed mainly of pastures that had been used in dairy farming–a far cry from the tall tree canopies you see there today.  Standing behind the current Allegheny Observatory, people had an expansive, unobstructed view of the Ohio, and this continued for many years as trees were kept pruned to preserve the view.

But now the trees mask the river entirely from this location, and there’s really only one place to check out the view.  So where is it?

To see the Ohio from what is called Pope’s View, you take the Snyder’s Point Loop Trail out to its furthest point.  You get onto this trail from the most southwestern point of Riverview Drive, the road that runs throughout the park.  A few minutes’ walk on the trail gives you a pleasant prelude to the meadows that follow.

Garlic mustard isn't tasty, so they use it as a bed.

It’s a rare occasion to walk along the Snyder’s Point Trail in the evening and not pass a family of deer snacking on the native plants, which is why all along the Snyder’s Point trail you’ll see large round piles of sticks.  These deer exclosures are experiments of the Parks Conservancy and other organizations, an attempt to protect the native saplings and groundcover that we plant in hopes that we can regenerate the canopy and the understory.  Riverview’s deer population is just too much for the plants to handle, which is part of why you’ll see entire areas with nothing but garlic mustard, jetbead, and multiflora rose–invasive plants that the deer don’t like and that take advantage of the lack of native competitors.

(Do you see why we love our Urban EcoStewards so much?  Without them, the native plants–and the biodiversity of the forest–wouldn’t stand a chance against the deer and the invasives.)

Milkweed beetle

But I digress–back to the trail!  You’ll eventually come to a lovely open area surrounded by meadows.  It’s especially fun to visit in the summertime when the milkweed is out in full force, because the plants are covered with tiny red milkweed beetles (Tetraopes tetraophthalmus).  The beetles get their scientific names from the odd structure of their eyes.  The base of their antennae splits each eye into two sections, making it look like they have four eyes.  The milkweed beetle is one of only a handful of creatures that can eat milkweed, the most well-known being the monarch butterfly.

After you pass through the meadows, stopping to see whether there are any birds living in the houses scattered around, you’ll come upon a small stone bench, and you’ve reached Pope’s View.  Unfortunately, I don’t know who Pope is to give you the great story of his life (or who Snyder is, for that matter), but his name lives on if not his story.  (Anyone who can enlighten me, I’d much appreciate it!)  Depending on what season it is, your view of the river may be either marginal or pretty darn good.  In the summertime, you can peek through the trees at what’s going on across the river, and in the winter you may actually get a decent look.  An expansive vista it’s not, but I think it is essential to the Riverview Park experience.

Pope's View in summer and in winter

On your way back from Pope’s View, you can either make the loop and return to the road the way you came, or you can take one of the many offshoot trails into the woods.  I’d recommend this route, but only if you’re pretty sure of your feet. 

Sulfur shelf fungus

There’s no telling what kind of interesting plants, trees, and especially fungus you’ll come across.  I think Riverview Park is one of the best places in the city to find really cool mushrooms and spring ephemeral flowers, and this area of the park is a great one to keep your eyes open for bright colors.

If you want to check this route out for yourself and learn a little park history along the way, mark your calendar for Wednesday, July 15, the next time Walks in the Woods cycles through Riverview Park.  For more information on all the walks, click here.

Calm after the storm

Early Saturday morning I headed for Schenley Park, so I could see for myself what Panther Hollow looked like after the violent storm last week.  Descending the steps from the Visitor Center, I was enclosed by trees and bushes still heavy with rain.

At the bottom, I headed right along Phipps Run. I could see what Phil meant when he said the stream bed the Conservancy had constructed a number of years ago was “working.”  Rushing water had carved channels in the trail, but it was otherwise sound, and trees and grasses planted in the bottom area must have slowed the torrents down.  What would the area have looked like if restoration work hadn’t been done?

Panther Hollow Lake, still muddy days after the storm.

Further on, at the far end of Panther Hollow Lake, I marveled at the line of muck left in the middle of a grassy area hundreds of feet from the Lake’s edge.  Looking back along the Lake, I realized that the torrential stormwater rushing down Phipps and Panther Hollow Runs must have had tremendous volume and force.  (It reminded me of when I lived in West Virginia where walls of water would thunder down a hollow and wipe out creek-side communities.  The topography is similar, but in WV there’s the added problem of strip mining.)

I help fundraise for the Conservancy, so my work keeps me in the office most of the time.  It had been a long time since I’d been in the park, and I realized how much I missed being in the woods.  My shoulders — full of tension from the week — began to relax.

Heading for Lower Panther Hollow Trail, I was stopped by a sharp tapping sound and spotted a hairy woodpecker on a black locust tree.  (Full disclosure: I had to later look at my tree and bird field guides to be certain about what I saw.)  There must have been a feast of tasty insects in the bark’s deep grooves because the woodpecker stayed in one place for a long while.

I continued to look for the effects of the storm and, from debris left behind, guessed that Panther Hollow Run –  now about 18″ wide — must have been 20′ to 30′ wide at the storm’s height.  I wished I could’ve been there to see the swollen stream, but knew I would’ve been swept off my feet.

Despite the violence of the storm, the woods still offered many delights.  A young tulip tree – a favorite from my childhood.  Chipmunks scampering across the trail and chattering away until I passed by.  The WPA-built bridges take me back in time, and I am surrounded by the many people who walked the woods before me.  One tufa bridge on the trail evokes Bilbo and the Shire.  Out of the thick moss blanketing its coarse surface are growing small columbine plants and ferns.  End-of-season wildflowers stun me with their beauty, but I can’t share their names.  (My husband is now planning to get me a wildflower field guide for my birthday.)

Daisies in the Bartlett Meadow

The trail took me to Bartlett Shelter and its wildflower meadow, which still stood after the rain.  I stuck to the park roads after that and wound my way through the golf course.  Behind me I suddenly heard a thin eerie scream and looked up to see two hawks (I think red-tailed hawks) soaring and circling the tree tops, talons ready.

A half hour later, I was back at my car, calm and happy — sated with the beauty and wildness in the park.

“What does not bend must break”

Last night’s storm was one of the strongest Pittsburgh has seen in years.  As the streets flooded and the wind blew, I couldn’t help but cringe thinking about what I’d see when I walked through the parks this morning.  What I did ultimately see was certainly disheartening, but a chat with Phil Gruszka and Erin Copeland, our Director of Parks Management and Maintenance and Restoration Ecologist, revealed that the parks had held up remarkably well.  I thought I’d share some of what I learned with you.

Frick Park
My first stop on the Tour o’ Destruction was Nine Mile Run, where a couple of DPW crew members were sweeping mud off the bridge near the Commercial Street parking lot.  They reported that the water had been higher than the top of the bridge at one point, but by morning the bridge was walkable (if slippery).  The most obvious things about the Nine Mile Run scene were the bent plants and the unusually high amount of trash.  The area around the bridge looked like the snack aisle of a convenience store, with just about every candy and chip wrapper imaginable stuck in the leafy debris.  Litter that’s tossed onto the ground in the neighborhoods surrounding the Nine Mile Run Watershed (Edgewood, Swissvale, Wilkinsburg, and Regent Square, to name a few) washes into the stream during a storm event, and this storm brought more than its fair share.  It’s absolutely true that what we do at home impacts our natural areas, even if we can’t always anticipate how.

Walking further along the stream, it seemed like almost all the tall plants had bowed in submission during the storm.  It looks grim now, but given a few days they’ll pop back up.  As Phil says, “What does not bend must break,” and floodplain plants are naturally able to go with the flow.  They take some of the hit from the stormwater, slowing it down and lessening its impact elsewhere in the wetland and on the trails.

Schenley Park

The Phipps Run Trail, with one of the basins to the middle right.

After checking out Nine Mile Run, I headed to Schenley Park to see how the Phipps Run stream engineering project the City and the Conservancy conducted about five years ago had held up.  The results did not look encouraging.  Water was still streaming down the steps, and all along the Phipps Run trail, there was a huge rut in the gravel.  As a regular park user, my perception was, “This trail is destroyed.”  But Phil explained to me that, far from being cause for despair, the appearance of the trail was actually a “Hooray!”

When the stream was re-engineered a few years ago, the purpose was to allow the trail to withstand unusually powerful storm events like this one.  Before the project, the trail was constantly washing out, making it impassable for hikers and bikers.  The City and the Conservancy mapped out an alternate course for the stream, allowing it to meander and slow down heavy flows of water.  Two basins were installed to catch sediment, so that in a storm like last night’s, heavy sediment is caught by the basins instead of rushing over the footbridges and into Panther Hollow Lake.  The heavy materials can slam into the bridges, causing them to crack or collapse, and collecting this sediment from the lake is much harder than collecting it from small basins. 

Panther Hollow Lake looks rough today, but the footbridge is still intact thanks to help from the re-engineered stream and the wetland plants.

The rut in the trail came from the water crossing over an edge that was placed to the left side of the trail.  This edge is meant to erode in storm events, directing water toward the Panther Hollow wetland, where it meets more of those great floodplain plants and slows down.  In a lesser storm, you wouldn’t see the rut, but it isn’t cause for alarm because the base material of the trail is still in place.  What happens next is that the City will remove the sediment that collected in the basins and use it in other areas of the park (for creating meadows and such), and bring in some gravel to fill the trail back in. 

In short, the stream behaved exactly as the project partners intended: none of the bridges were damaged, the basins did their job, and a few minor repairs will bring the trail back to its full use.  These repairs have to happen every now and then if we want to have streams as part of our parks–they’re beautiful to look at, but they are subject to the whims of nature just like everything else.

What Can You Do to Help?
I asked Phil how people could help out in the next few days, and his first piece of advice was to allow the City crews a few days to clear out the hazardous materials, like downed or damaged trees.  The north end of Frick Park was hit pretty hard, so mountain bikers would be wise to stay off the trails until they can be cleaned up.

If you want to get out in the parks and help clean up, the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association is having a stream sweep this Sunday, June 21 from 9:30am to noon.  You can help remove the trash that has collected in the wetland, which would make a huge difference in helping the area to recover.  Click here to learn more and sign up.

Want to see a little more of the storm aftermath?  Click here for more photos.

The Nine Mile Run stream, looking more robust than usual!

Eight Unsung Spots #1: Schenley Pool Meadow

We’re starting a new series on the blog today called Eight Unsung Spots in the Parks. These are places in our park system that either get a lot less traffic or that people might have overlooked on their regular hiking or biking routes. We’ll do a spotlight on two places in each of the four regional parks over the coming weeks, so check back often!

Coming up with an “unsung” spot in Schenley Park is fairly difficult, because Schenley isn’t really the park you visit when you’re looking for some genuine solitude.  But I thought I’d shine a spotlight on one of the Conservancy’s lesser-known projects of the past few years, a huge patch of wildflowers known as the Schenley Park Pool Meadow.

Before and After: the lawn in 2006; a summer evening in 2008.

The meadow is pretty much where you’d expect–right past the fence that borders the swimming pool.  Like a lot of our meadow sites, it was previously used as a lawn before the Conservancy created the meadow in 2007.  Here are just a couple of reasons we love meadows as opposed to lawns:

• Meadows are beautiful to look at and provide visual interest for park users.
• Meadows increase the park’s overall biodiversity by introducing many different native plant species into the park and providing habitat for insects, birds, and other wildlife.



• Meadows require a lot less maintenance than lawns, which require frequent mowing.  Because the plants in meadows are native to Western Pennsylvania, they have adapted to the weather conditions of the area and grow well with little assistance from us.
• Meadows soak up a lot more storm water, reducing flooding and erosion in the park.  Our rule of thumb is to look at how tall a plant is and estimate a 1:1 relationship between its height above-ground and its depth below-ground.  Imagine how small one blade of grass is compared to a big black-eyed susan.  Now imagine how much deeper the black-eyed susan’s root system is, and therefore how much more water it can soak up.

And this meadow will hopefully eventually have the added benefit of providing a natural cover for the graffiti that’s all over the wall under the Charles Anderson Bridge.

Volunteers Grace and Beth battle the horseweed.

With any new project comes a set of challenges, though, and the pool meadow’s chief menace has been horseweed.  Although it’s native to the U.S. and not as noxious as some of our enemy plants in the forest, it spreads easily via many windborne seeds and thus is not the kind of plant you want competing with your other meadow natives.  With the help of some of our reliable volunteers, we’ve cut the horseweed population lower each year, and hopefully that’s making it easier for the other plants to grow.

And there’s lots of great plants to see: in the springtime, wild lupine sends up purple stalks, and July brings an explosion of bergamot and ox-eye sunflowers that gives way to black-eyed susans in the fall.  Every year I come across something new and unknown and find myself doing image searches when I get home to try and ID the latest mysteries.

The Schenley Park pool officially opens this weekend, so when you’re done taking a dip, stop off by the meadow and take a look.  (In July you won’t be able to miss the show, but its charms are a little more subtle right now!)  Then check out Wildflowers of Western PA for help identifying all the cool flowers you spot in the meadow!

“It’s irresistible!”

So said our CEO, Meg, the other day while talking about how she can’t help interrupting her dog-walking to pull up garlic mustard.  That’s about as apt a description as any; I truly think that once you know how destructive this plant is and see just how widespread it is, it becomes imperative for you to remove as much as humanly possible before it goes to seed.

And while it is great to simply yank it up wherever you see it, doing so in the context of the Urban EcoSteward program can prove even more rewarding.  When you take responsibility for a plot of land over the long term, you really start to see the difference from year to year.  (You also see just how long it takes to get rid of this stuff.)

I picked my EcoSteward site (along the Homewood Trail in Frick Park) in 2007 because when I first wandered by it in the springtime, garlic mustard was pretty much the only plant I saw on the ground, with a stray native jewelweed here and there.  The site had other, larger invasives, like privet and bush honeysuckle, but those are comparatively easy to remove–a little elbow grease and a visit from the honeysuckle popper and they’re pretty much done.  

The hillside in 2008

But garlic mustard removal is something that requires a multi-year commitment.  The plant produces no seeds its first year, but it overwinters and produces them in year two.  Obviously the seed-bearing plants are the priority for removal, and often it takes all your available time just tending to those.  But I tend to get a little obsessive, and if I’m working in an area where there are a ton of first-year plants, I try to pull as many of them up as I can (rationalizing that it will make my work easier next year).

This is my second spring of pulling garlic mustard on my site.  Last year I came back on three separate occasions; this year, I knocked it all out in an hour and a half.  There’s still a significant amount, but it’s nowhere near the thick blanket that used to cover the hillside.  Instead, I have a growing colony of jewelweed, and it seems like everywhere I turn I uncover a new and interesting native plant: Solomon’s seal, may apple, goldenrod, Virginia creeper, and lots of little tree saplings.   They join the white oaks I planted this winter and the rattlesnake master plants I installed this spring. 

Rattlesnake master. Isn't it cute?

(As an aside, I’ve seen rattlesnake master described as “a plant only a biologist could love,” which can’t possibly be true because I’m no biologist and I think it’s awesome.  It was so named because people once thought its roots could heal rattlesnake bites – you can read more about it here.)

So don’t despair, those of you who can’t help cringing when you see a huge colony of garlic mustard.  The Parks Conservancy’s volunteers continue to go after it, our EcoStewards especially.  The increasing population of natives on my site is proof that if you commit to working on a site for a few years, you’ll start to see some changes.  And there’s nothing more irresistible than helping to create a healthy habitat.

Want to help rid your favorite park space of garlic mustard?  Read more about the Urban EcoSteward program.

The jewelweed has moved in!

Life among the daffodils

I am a broken record when it comes to winter.  I can’t stand it.  The gloominess, the cold, the persistent slush on the ground…and most of all the fact that (when it’s not covered in snow) everything is just brown.  I’m a flower person.  So for the second year in a row I have been probably more excited than most about our Daffodil Project.

Our intrepid group of Year One planters.

We started this endeavor back in October 2007, on what may be my favorite volunteer day to date with the Conservancy.  We had several different groups working that day, among them some teenagers from Hill House and some women from the YWCA.  Before they arrived to plant 5,000 daffodil bulbs over at the Bartlett Playground, Phil, Jake, and I, along with Sandy Feather from the Penn State Cooperative Extension, did something we called the “daffodil do-si-do.” 

This entailed each of us loading a wheelbarrow with one of the four varieties of bulbs, and then alternating climbing up into the bed of a vehicle to dump part of the contents of our wheelbarrows into each other’s.  It was our own little daffodil-mixing roundelay, and it was a fun way to start a really cool day of bulb-digging, planting, and mulching.

The blooms the next spring were beautiful, and the Daffodil Project was born.  Our plan was to return in October 2008 and plant 7,850 more bulbs on the other side of the Bartlett site, and then branch out to the other three regional parks in the coming years.   The bulbs were planted this time around by a great crew from Giant Eagle, so it was time to (im)patiently wait for spring.

Early April on Bartlett Street

Long after my parents’ daffodils had wilted in Tennessee, our daffodils finally started to push up.  Of course I was there that first weekend of April to get an early image, but even that can’t really prepare you for the sight of 12,000+ daffodils at their peak.

Two weeks later, the Bartlett Street area of Schenley Park had to be in contention for one of the loveliest places in Pittsburgh.  On Thursday night, I spent some time photographing the daffodils, and watching other people photograph their kids with them.  I dusted off the Gigapan, which had been taking a long winter’s nap (my lack of enthusiasm for winter scenery taking its toll), thinking it’d be fun to capture them all in a single image, just in case anyone ever got really bored and felt like checking how many of them had sprouted.

Click the image to zoom in on the Gigapan!

The next day was just fantastic.  My friend Joanna brought her 18-month-old daughter Julia in to take some photos with the daffodils.  We had done this last year in the original planting, when she was just 6 months old and still couldn’t sit up independently.  We got some fun shots back then and declared Julia the poster girl for the Daffodil Project, but this year she was in her element.  There is nothing like a curious 18-month-old surrounded by brightly colored blooms. 

Our poster girl among the daffodils.

Then that evening I went back and took photos of two couples using the daffodils as a backdrop.  One of the couples actually got engaged right there in the midst of them!  Even though I spend a lot of time in the parks, it’s not every day that I get such a wonderful reminder of the magic of these spaces, and get to witness them becoming an enduring part of someone’s most special memories. 

The next weekend was a frantic one for me; I was getting ready to head out of town and only had about an hour at the end of the day to myself, so I figured I’d give the daffodils one last visit before they disappeared for another year.  The 5,000 bulbs from 2007 were beginning to fade, but the 7,850 from 2008 were in their absolute prime.  I had meant to hang out for about five minutes and ended up spending the whole hour there, in the company of an animated game of soccer and a couple of people trying to fly kites.  I even ran into our CEO, Meg, who was out walking her dog. 

Just before sunset on April 25

Now it’s May and the daffodils are spent, with only deadheading left to be done.  (And this year we’ve got a group of kids who are volunteering to help us out, which I’m looking forward to!)  We’ve moved on to all the other dazzling shows spring puts on every year.  But to me the Daffodil Project is something special, and I have a feeling it’s come to mean something to a lot of other people who come to Schenley Park too.  I can’t wait to see what we do next year.

If you’d like to support the Daffodil Project by helping us purchase bulbs, visit https://www.pittsburghparks.org/donate and designate your funds toward “Daffodil Project” in the dropdown menu.

Spring tree planting brings vitality

Springtime.  Birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and trees everywhere are awakening from their winter slumber to once again break bud and offer their leaves up to the sun.

Right now, before trees completely wake up, is the perfect time to pluck them from the ground to be moved from the loving stewardship of our nursery friends around the region to their new homes in Pittsburgh’s four regional parks.  And thanks to funding from the TreeVitalize program, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. 

Anyone strolling along the top of Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park will surely notice the addition of many young trees to that cherished Pittsburgh landscape.  Ten new yellowwood trees populate the summit of the hill, while continuing down towards Phipps Conservatory one finds clusters of Swamp White Oak, Redbud, Serviceberry, and Sweetgum.  These trees comprise the next generation of landscape trees, spreading roots into the soil of their new home, and poised to assume the role of dominant shade trees when Flagstaff’s current council of wise old trees begins to senesce and disappear from the landscape.

Visitors will encounter similar planting sites in each of the 4 regional parks:

Horsechestnut and yellowwood trees line the Nine Mile Run Trail of Frick Park, promising shade to future visitors of the stream restoration.  Anyone waiting for a bus on the Perrysville border of Riverview Park will surely notice new additions to the nearby lawn, as redbuds and thornless honeylocusts dot the formerly uniform grassy slope.  And beginning tomorrow, visitors to Highland Park will notice city workers and PPC staff planting a variety of new trees around the Vernal Pools off of Washington Ave, and adding to last year’s collection of Turkish filberts on Mt. Bigelow.

DPW crews prepare the soil for tree planting.

But one cannot celebrate the addition of new trees in the spring without acknowledging the human labor involved to ensure these trees reach their new homes in good health and grow there heartily.  This spring, PPC staff and the Department of Public Works have once again teamed up to plant these large caliper trees in the parks.  With the mechanical strength of a backhoe, imbued with the grace of a human arm by a skilled operator at the helm, we dig holes at an efficient pace.  And fresh from a Tree Planting Workshop held this winter and hosted jointly by PPC and Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest, DPW workers and PPC staff skillfully maneuver the heavy trees into their carefully prepared planting sites.  Holding fast to the specs of proper tree planting, the final human touch ensures sound burial of the trees’ subterranean elements, and proud, straight orientation of the trunk and branches displayed to the world.

Kevin from DPW and Jake from PPC install a tree at Flagstaff.

Once installed, several seasons of careful watering and developmental pruning will be carried out before these trees are left to strike out on their own.  And as they mature into the canopy of the future, this spring’s trees will no doubt smile upon future generations of tree planters skillfully planting future generations of trees.

What a difference a day makes...

American chestnut comes back

We thought we’d share some exciting news about the rebirth of the American chestnut that we came across in the Chicago Sun-Times.  This is especially interesting to us because our own Phil Gruszka has been part of this research. There’s an orchard in Highland Park that has been part of the chestnut breeding program for years, and we’re glad Pittsburgh (and Phil!) has been able to help bring back the chestnut.

Link: American chestnut ready to reign again, Chicago Sun-Times

Save on shoes and help the parks!

Need to complete your Hat Luncheon outfit, or just working on creating your spring wardrobe?  On Wednesday, April 22, Footloose’s Shadyside location celebrates Earth Day with a special celebration that benefits the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.  From 5:30 to 7:00 p.m., Footloose will offer a 10% discount on all purchases, and 10% of all items sold will go to the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.

Footloose is a high-end shoe retailer located in Shadyside at 736 Bellefonte Street.  The Earth Day Celebration will feature an exclusive trunk show from Paul Green, live jazz piano from Paul Cohen, and of course the opportunity to support your parks by saving money.  We hope to see you there to celebrate Earth Day in style!