Native Plant Teaching Gardens: A Collaboration with the Guilford Garden Club

​In partnership since 2005, Friends School of Baltimore and the Guilford Garden Club (GGC) have created a series of Native Plant Teaching Gardens throughout the campus. Conservation and education are at the heart of the project.  The gardens employ Chesapeake Bay Watershed native plants that thrive with minimal care, attract pollinators and other wildlife, and absorb surface water on the school’s sloping campus.

Friends School, founded in 1784, is Baltimore’s oldest school.  The campus is tucked between two Olmsted Brothers designed neighborhoods – Roland Park and Homeland.  Managing storm water runoff has been a constant challenge on the school’s bowl shaped site that acts as a funnel for rain and snowmelt into the Stony Run, a creek on its western border channeling water that ultimately flows into the Chesapeake Bay.   Over the past 11 years, GGC has worked with students, faculty and the extended community, providing garden plans and planting supervision.  The groups have labored side-by-side, planting over 10,000 trees, shrubs, perennials, ferns and grasses in gardens designed to capture and control the flow of water.

In 2009, Stony Run Meeting joined the gardening efforts on campus.  GGC members worked with the Upper School Sustainability Club and Stony Run Meeting members to design and build the Friends Community Garden. In this vegetable garden, organic gardening practices yield harvests shared with the CARES food pantry. In 2015 and 2016, rain gardens and conservation landscaping was installed on Meeting property.

As the gardens grow on campus, faculty members increasingly find ways to incorporate them into the curriculum.  Art, science, and language arts classes as well as many clubs enjoy using resources right outside their door.  Families have inquired about and are using native plants in their home gardens and planting vegetable patches; many have purchased plants at Scarlet and Gray Day (Homecoming) Native Plant Sales. Faculty and parents from neighboring schools and members of nearby churches have toured the campus, using it as a model as they make plans for their own native plant and vegetable gardens.

More work lies ahead.  New garden designs and installations, signage, and the enormous task of clearing invasive plants to restore woodlands and the banks of Stony Run will require continued collaboration and outreach to neighbors. Together, GGC and Friends School aspire to create a “conservation campus” for water, energy, and native plants and wildlife of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed as well as generations of ecological gardeners.

In 2014, the Director of Communications of KIPP Baltimore, Hillarie Szczygiel Yoffe, put out the word that the KIPP charter schools, which serve children in the the Park Heights neighborhood of Baltimore City, had an opportunity for a gardening group to become involved on their campus. The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) is a national network of charter schools. Since 2002, Harmony Academy (grades K – 4) and Ujima Academy (grades 5 – 8) have enrolled underserved students based on a lottery system in an environment focused on boosting their academic achievement and setting students on the path toward college. The elementary school and middle school consolidated in 2013 at a site formerly used as a public high school and had recently added a playground. Five large planters had been donated to the school and installed near the playground, but were empty.

In a collaborative effort among KIPP teachers and administrators and GGC members, the playground beds were initially planted in May 2014. Consistent with the GGC’s focus on plants native to the Chesapeake Bay and KIPP’s desire to make the plantings attractive to students as well as instructive, 2 meadow beds, 1 herb bed, 1 blueberry bed and 1 texture bed were installed.  During a family work day, students, parents and Yale Alumni Association volunteers planted materials which had been selected and delivered by GGC. A very wet spring contributed to the establishment of healthy plants.

 

Apiary Hedgerow

At the same time, John Baumgarten, a KIPP science teacher, was looking to establish an apiary in a more remote part of the school campus with the help of a grant from Whole Foods. Grant money funded his training as a beekeeper and the acquisition of a hive, bees and other materials related to establishing an apiary. By the spring of 2015, a Beekeeping Club had been established and GGC had spent time analyzing the site and developing a plan for an initial planting which could survive in the dense weedy area which had no easy access to water. GGC members selected and delivered plants in plug form and installed them with members of the Beekeeper Club. GGC also delivered about a dozen large maple tree stumps and arranged them in the apiary as a gathering place for students.

 

Welcome Garden Planters

When the school received 6 additional raised planters as a gift, KIPP again approached GGC for help. The planters had been scattered throughout the campus. GGC members proposed that the raised beds all be moved to a location near the entrance to the school within sight of the playground planters to maximize their effect, and facilitate their maintenance and visibility by the school community. Again, plants native to the Chesapeake Bay were selected, the beds were designed and materials delivered by GGC. Planting by the Beekeeper Club and GGC members was completed in the spring of 2015.

Maintenance of both sets of planters has been performed by GGC members in the spring and fall by weeding and replanting any significant areas that have failed. The club has not undertaken routine maintenance such as watering, but rather has encouraged the school to assume that responsibility.

 

Holiday Arrangements

In the GGC December meetings in 2015 and 2016, members created holiday floral arrangements, which were then donated to KIPP and given to teachers and staff at their holiday party. The school was very appreciative of the gesture and of our desire to continue the relationship.

 

Vegetable Garden Plans

In 2015, our contact person became Ryan Connor, who is the Health and Wellness Coordinator of the Rawles Health Center, a health center newly installed at the school and funded by Johns Hopkins. The Health Center functions as a nurse’s office, but also performs the important role of educating the student population and their families on health, nutrition, exercise, and environmental sustainability. With these goals in mind, the focus of the gardens shifted from ornamental plants to vegetables and herbs.

GGC and KIPP have decided that if a vegetable garden is to succeed at the school, the best site would be the second set of planters (relocating the plants there to other parts of the campus) . The area was fenced and gated .

 

A School Relocates

In 2019, the KIPP Schools relocated out of the buildings leased from Baltimore City to a new facility a few miles away, at 2000 Edgewood Road in Baltimore, City.

The area encompassing the Baltimore City park now known as Lake Roland was part of an 18th century land grant from Lord Baltimore to several Maryland families. The centerpiece of the park is a reservoir, known as Lake Roland, that was formed in the 1850’s as a water source for Baltimore’s growing population. In the 1940’s the land surrounding the lake was consolidated by Baltimore City to form Robert E. Lee Memorial Park. Today, the park encompasses 503 acres of walking trails surrounded by wetlands, meadows, rocky plateaus, and mature hardwood forests and is home to two National Register Historic Districts. Guilford Garden Club (GGC) has been one of many partners working to maximize the potential of the park.

Historic District

The Lake Roland Historic District comprises about half of the 500 acres around the dam. It was listed in 1992 by Maryland and the Federal Government thanks to the work of the Robert E. Lee Park Conservancy, an organization founded in 1983 with very generous financial and membership support from the Guilford Garden Club.

Caretaker’s Cottage Native Plant Garden

In 2001, GGC members undertook to clean up and restore the area around the Caretaker’s Cottage. “Project Clean Stream” united volunteers to removed trash and invasive plants from this area of the park. GGC members designed a garden for the space and filled it with native trees and plants. The Conservancy disbanded in 2009 when oversight of Lake Roland passed from Baltimore City to Baltimore County. State and County funds became available to make significant improvements to revitalize the park, which was renamed Lake Roland. Under the stewardship of the Lake Roland Nature Council (LRNC), the park added a trestle bridge, pavilion, Acorn Hill play area, Paw Point Dog Park, and the Lake Roland Nature Center. The Lake Roland Nature Center is a green focused building open year-round, with 2,594 square feet of classroom, meeting, and educational space. In 2014, discussions began among members of LRNC’s Executive Board, Master Plan Committee, and Environmental and Historic Preservation Committee, and Guilford Garden Club (GGC) about the need for a master plan for Lake Roland.

Nature Center Landscape Concept Plan

In 2015, members of GGC and LRNC engaged ecological landscape designer Larry Weaner and his associates Rebecca Kagan, L.D., Jenna Webster, L.D., and Andropogon emeritus principal Carol Franklin, L.A. to develop a master plan to conceptualize, fully design, and eventually install a single project that would serve as a prototype that could be applied in other areas of the park. The site selected for this multi-phase pilot project was 5 acres of Sycamore- dominant forested wetland stretching westward behind the park’s new Nature Center. GGC and LRNC also contracted with the consultants for a Short-Term Invasive Management Plan so that volunteers could begin to remove invasive plants to prepare for the next phases of the pilot. Century Engineering, a local engineering firm, generously donated surveyor time to provide drone photography of the site and layout of the trail network. LRNC and GGC volunteers installed sequential trail stakes. In 2020, Phase I of the Nature Center Pilot project, the Concept Plan, was completed. This Concept Plan was funded using proceeds from several Native Plant Sales orchestrated by an army of volunteers from both GGC and LRNC held at Lake Roland.

Bare Hills Barrens Adaptive Management Plan

Concurrently, LRNC and GGC undertook a second project in a different part of the park – the restoration of a portion of the park known as Bare Hills Serpentine Barrens. At Bare Hills, only 3 to 4 acres of remnant serpentine savanna remain of a once much larger grassland, which was kept “barren” for millennia through disturbance: grazing of giant, prehistoric herbivores, fire by Native Americans, and mining in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The remnants are in scattered patches, the largest not much more than 1 acre in size, within roughly 80 acres of Virginia pine – eastern red-cedar forest. Less than 80 years ago the largest contiguous area of serpentine grassland at Bare Hills covered about 125 acres. This disappearing serpentine grassland is one of the most globally rare natural communities. Roger Latham, Ph. D. research ecologist, conservation biologist, environmental planner and principal of the firm Continental Conservation was engaged to lead this restoration project. The goal is to develop an adaptive management plan which could avert further losses by ecological restoration and ecological maintenance – expanding the grassland and putting in place effective substitutes for the historical disturbance regime and other dynamic ecosystem processes for long-term sustainability. GGC participated in funding the Adaptive Management Plan through plant sales as well as two grants secured through affiliation with the Garden Club of America and its Partners for Plants (P4P) initiative. This grant money has funded the on-going development of the adaptive management plan in Bare Hills.

New Song Gardening Project

In the early 2000s, the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore underwent a redevelopment and revitalization as the result of collaboration among the State of Maryland, Habitat for Humanity, and strong community leaders. An anchor to this project was the New Song Center on Pressman Street – a combined K-8 public school and 28,000 square foot community learning center, meeting place and sports facility.

The New Song Center was dedicated in April 2001. In October 2003, Guilford Garden Club members met with Sandtown Community leader Allan Tibbels and New Song principal Susan Tibbels, the combined force behind New Song, to explore a partnership. Over the next six years, GGC was a consistent supporter and presence at the Academy.

Prior to the summer of 2004, the narrow outdoor area of the campus was limited to a promising row of multi-trunked Redbud trees and small grassy area crossed by a bluestone path with soil described by GGC members as “a baked brick of clay and trash.” Working with a passionate science teacher, GGC members designed “The Wildlife Habitat Garden” with goals of attracting birds and beneficial insects to campus and slowing stormwater runoff. The garden was used for education as well as for pleasure, not only for the school community, but also for neighbors, who could view the garden from the street and alley. Installation was performed by students, teachers, volunteers, and GGC members. The result was a beautiful oasis of native Maryland plants. Financing for the garden design and planting was provided by GGC and The Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

GGC continued to visit New Song for years, during every season, working side by side with the school community to care for and enjoy the garden. In early winter, GGC members harvested greens and dried plant materials from their own gardens to share at a festive celebration held in the school’s greenhouse and classrooms. GGC members worked with every student to make a Christmas decoration to take home. A special relationship developed between the communities, with students expressing their thanks through handwritten and drawn cards.

In 2006, GGC received the Youth Involvement and Development Award from The Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland for its educational success at New Song.

Old Otterbein Church Restoration

In early 1974, the Guilford Garden Club set its sights on a bi-centennial project that would encompass the old and the new. Downtown Baltimore was undergoing a transformative revitalization. Within the Inner Harbor development area, stood the Old Otterbein Church – a historic building in need of attention.

The Church, erected in 1786, is the oldest church in continual use in the city of Baltimore. Built for about $5000 by Jacob Small, of brick brought to America as ballast on English ships, this small Georgian church with multi-paned arched windows containing some of the original sashes still rang the original bells. The church’s namesake, Reverend Philip Wilheim Otterbein, is buried on the grounds.

The restoration work undertaken by the Guilford Garden Club’s Otterbein Committee garnered the support of the Charles Center Inner Harbor Management Corporation. Club members volunteered to remove old shrubs, weeds and trees. The Committee solicited bids for extensive renovations to the hardscape, resulting in the replacement of existing concrete paths with period brick as well as the installation of granite steps and a table monument for Otterbein’s grave marker. With these improvements, the Church regained its eighteenth century aura. The capstone of these efforts was the planting of an eighteenth century specimen tree – a Washington Hawthorne. As reported in the local news, the tree planting orchestrated by the club was attended by Mayor William Donald Schaefer, Walter Sondheim, chairman of the Charles Center Management Corporation and other city officials.

The Club continued to support the Church after this initial undertaking. In 1976, we donating money to help fund the replacement of the aging roof. In 1980, the club planted 400 spring bulbs. The “Guilford Garden Club Memorial Garden” was installed in coordination with Maxalea in 1981 – an almost maintenance free garden of shrubbery, complete with a stone and bronze marker in appreciation of our continuing support. The  club continued to advise and assist in the maintenance of various aspects of the landscaping on the church grounds throughout the 1980s.

In 2007, the church called upon the club for advice and assistance taming the overgrown churchyard and restoring several areas that had been damaged during renovations to the adjacent Convention Center. GGC members worked with church members to clear invasive plants from the property and replaced them with native plants. Donations were solicited from various exhibitors at MANTS (Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show) which allowed the effort to include many trees and large shrubs.

Almost 50 years after the partnership began, inspired by the marker in the Guilford Garden Club Memorial Garden, the church has once again sought the advice of the club, as the gardens on the historic property mature and evolve. This partnership has happily endured across several generations of both the Old Otterbein Church and the Guilford Garden Club.