Lessons in Greening at Two Chestnut Hill Schools
By Jane Carroll

Designated spaces marked “hybrid vehicles only” in the parking lot at Chestnut Hill Academy provide the first clue: this venerable private school for boys is going green. 

Last January the school unveiled its new Rorer Center for Science & Technology, which incorporates state-of-the-art environmental technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, and tanks that store water collected from the roof and reuse it. The building and grounds serve as part of a large stormwater management system that includes the parking lot, built with permeable material that lets water percolate into the ground.

Two rain gardens
outside the building
collect and filter water from the roof (one of the gardens is pictured at
right). Designed by Joseph Cairone of Cairone & Kaupp, a Philadelphia planning, engineering and landscape architecture firm, the rain gardens abound with native plants such as switch grass, red-twig dogwood, native rhododendrons, American holly, northern bayberry, fragrant sumac, Clethra alnifolia, and serviceberry.
 
The plantings signal the first phase of a larger plan to turn the entire CHA campus into a native-plant arboretum with assistance from the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, which has donated two young American chestnut trees for the project.
 
“These trees grew from cuttings from a 70-foot tree in Adair County, Kentucky,” explains Jason Lubar, associate director of urban forestry for
the Morris Arboretum. “The parent tree is one of the few to survive in the wild; it’s apparently resistant to the chestnut blight.” Lubar explained that most trees in the wild succumb to the chestnut blight—which virtually wiped out American chestnuts in the early 1900s—when they reach sexual maturity at about 10 years of age. So, arborists will closely monitor these two trees over the next few years.
  
Science teachers at CHA immediately began to incorporate the native plants into their lessons, teaching students about tree biology, forest secession, and wildlife habitat.  

Martin H. Baumberger, chair of the CHA Science Department, explains, “CHA’s soon-to-be LEED-certified [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] Science and Technology Center has helped to catapult awareness of environmental issues to the forefront of daily life at school and instilled a deep sense of pride throughout our community about what this building represents.”     

Just down the street and around the
corner, two more rain gardens grace the campus of the Springside School, a girls’ academy
that borders the Wissahickon Valley in Fairmount Park (pictured at right). PHS staff provided design services and other assistance to create a large rain garden in a traffic circle behind the school. Native plants in the garden attract birds and pollinating insects. The garden forms part of an Audubon Society-certified bird habitat students helped plant on campus. Local artist Stacy Levy worked with students to create a sculpture on the front of the school building consisting of curved blue downspouts that drain into another small rain garden.

Mary Ann Boyer, a middle school science teacher and one of the driving forces behind the rain gardens, says, “As neighbors of Fairmount Park, we are deeply committed to being stewards of the environment. Whether planting native species in their own backyard or on Springside's campus, students see they can make a difference.”

The Springside School—which partners with CHA on green campus initiatives—has a long history of environmental practices, from a school-wide recycling program to the giant stormwater recharge beds that sit beneath the parking lots and fields to the melamine plates the girls decorate themselves (to use in the cafeteria instead of throwaways). The school recently received a state grant to completely cover its large field house roof with solar panels.

Springside and CHA are joined by a growing number of schools in the Philadelphia region, both private and public, that are going all out to help protect the environment. Students in these schools are learning first-hand that new technologies and smart design, along with individual efforts, can reduce our impact on the earth. It’s a lesson that will benefit us all.