From mayapples to deer footprints, Pine Run Park provides nature discoveries for TMS students. There are several ways that we are assisting the environment around us.
There is a bit of documentation that the students and I are doing via "Inaturalist". Look for dbaumgarten or Pine Run Park
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/11998238 or
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12981447.
The vegetable garden is host to a variety of insects (some that harm the garden). The insects that are most exciting are the butterfly caterpillars. I'm not sure what this one is on the parsley, but we had a monarch on the dill several times over the years.
The rain garden at TMS is catching and slowing rainwater that falls on the children's house nature play area. By assisting the water to infiltrate, the rain garden improves the Pine Run Creek. Slower water traveling through the ground rather than across the land reduces soil run off.
Several times a year, children in different classes get to plant, weed and enhance the TMS rain garden. This is helpful to our watershed (Pine Run is a tributary to the Wissahickon Creek), and the children get hands-on experience transplanting native plants, using garden tools, finding what is in the soil, and discovering insects, even salamanders.
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