This time, it was the rain garden and riparian buffer along Jenkintown Creek that were in the spotlight as Abington Friends School celebrated a pair of environmental projects that serve a twin purpose.
Not only do they improve the water quality of the tiny creek, which has its headwaters on campus and eventually flows into the Delaware River, they also teach our students to be good stewards of the earth.

The ceremony held last Friday in front of the rain garden was also a time to celebrate the School’s close collaboration with the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership.

“In our wildest imaginations, we never thought that our very first conversations three years ago would lead to a project like this,” Julie Slavet, TTF’s executive director, told the crowd.

“This is a hands-on school,” she added. “As we know, that is what has the biggest impact in changing behavior and creating environmental advocates. We are not just improving water quality — that is our primary goal — we are also creating the foundation for a clean water future, which you can see sitting right here in front of me.”

Julie was referring to the Lower School students who listened to the speeches — with remarkably little fidgeting — and were among several classes of students who had helped plant the rain garden last spring.

The rain garden’s surface is covered with plants that filter pollutants such as gas and oil from storm water that runs off of the Lower School’s parking lots. Layered below the surface are gravel and loosely compacted soil. The riparian buffer is a band of plantings along both banks of the creek that keep pollutants from reaching the water.

Julie said the AFS projects, along with those downstream at the Sisters of St. Basil the Great and Manor College in Fox Chase, were managing a million gallons of storm-water runoff annually. “That’s a pretty impressive number,” she said.

The AFS rain garden received more than $109,000 in funding from TTF and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Delaware River Restoration Fund. NFWF’s Rachel Dawson and U.S Rep. Brendan Boyle spoke to the crowd about their commitment to water quality and Kurt Imhof from U.S. Sen. Bob Casey’s office attended the ceremony.

The program opened with brief remarks from AFS Head of School Rich Nourie, Rosanne Mistretta, AFS Director of Experiential Learning, and senior Louis Platt.

On September 9, AFS celebrated the opening of the Headwaters Discovery Playground, up the hill from the rain garden. The new playground, rain garden and riparian buffer are all key elements of the School’s larger vision of extending students’ learning into the outdoors.

To read coverage of these two events in this week’s Times-Chronicle visit here and here.