Join us Friday mornings in Glen Providence Park! We remove invasive shrubs and vines that strangle beneficial native plants and crowd the trails, and work on other projects to support plants and wildlife in the park. Enjoy conversation and soak in the natural beauty of the glen – while making a positive impact.

Conservation Crew

Friday mornings
(weather permitting)
9:30 – 11:30 am
Registration required:
Email us at FriendsoftheGlen [at] gmail [dot] com

Since 2013, we’ve removed over 375 bags of invasive plants – liberating native trees and shrubs that were strangled and weighted down by vines – while beautifying and keeping open the trails. Some of our other projects? We’ve painted trail blazes, measured trail distances for trail posts, carried in native trees for planting projects, cleared branches from fallen trees damming the stream, repeatedly cleared the pond intake from blockages, and removed smaller limbs from fallen trees to unblock trails until County Parks could get in with chainsaws.

Logistics:

• Please take a quick read over our Invasive Plant Removal Guidelines
• Wear work clothes – ideally long sleeves & pants – including appropriate sturdy footwear.
• Please bring gloves and pruners.
• We will provide bags and any additional tools.
• Be prepared for hills and uneven terrain.
• We send out an email to our Crew on Thursdays with that week’s project and meeting location, with the next morning’s forecast in mind. Whether you can join us once or weekly, email us at FriendsoftheGlen [at] gmail [dot] com!
• We generally work when the temperature is between 35 and 80 degrees.

Coming soon:

• We’re usually too busy to snap photos, but we’ll add a few here from some past work days!

Glen Providence Park is owned and managed by Delaware County, and we work with the permission of, and in consultation with, Delaware County Parks & Recreation and the Delaware County Conservation District, in addition to consulting other natural lands managers and resources.

We take a pragmatic approach and prioritize those invasive plants that both cause the most harm and are effective to remove. We do not do structural trail maintenance or use power tools.

Join us for a late fall history and nature walk in Glen Providence Park! We’ll follow part of the self-guided route from the 1941 Nature Guide as we share historical photos, maps, stories, and descriptions of the glen. Learn about the park’s native shrubs and plants, as we look for wildlife and take in the last of the fall foliage! 

History & Nature Walk

Saturday, November 10*
2:00-4:00pm
Rain date Sunday, November 11
Main entrance, 550 W. State Street, Media

The walk will be led by me (the park history buff) and our native plant expert Marcia Tate.

Logistics:

• Estimated distance: 1-1.5 miles
• Estimated time: 2 hours
• Free!
• Be prepared for stream crossings, steep hills, and uneven (possibly icy or muddy) terrain: wear sturdy walking shoes, bring a hiking pole if you use one, and you never know when you’ll want binoculars!
• If the weather is iffy, we’ll post on our website and facebook by 12:00 noon on Saturday whether we will use the Sunday rain date.

 
* This is a new date. The walk was originally scheduled for Saturday, November 3.

For our 8th National Public Lands Day on Saturday, October 6, we installed wildlife habitat plantings along the 1941 Trail in Glen Providence Park! This year, 25 lovely adults, teens, and kids volunteered a combined 76 hours digging, planting, mulching, installing deer fencing, raking, and watering. Our volunteers were so efficient, they finished planting early, and cleared trash along the trails!

The native trees, shrubs, and woodland plants help to restore the forest, protect the stream, and stabilize the hillside along the 1941 Trail, where several trees fell during storms last winter. In addition to helping control erosion, the plants benefit wildlife by providing habitat and seeds, nuts, fruits, and nectar for mammals, birds, butterflies, and other pollinators. We planted 19 native trees and shrubs, and 34 woodland plants – the complete list is below.

This short trail is named for “The Nature Guide to Glen Providence Park,” a pamphlet from 1941 that leads the visitor on a self-guided tour through the park, starting on this trail. You can view the PDF version of the 1941 Nature Guide, and take its tour!

We have so many to thank for their help with this project… starting with all those wonderful volunteers!

Delaware County Parks & Recreation provided the funding for the plants and delivered the mulch. Delaware County Conservation District delivered their Conservation Planting Trailer full of all of the tools we could need! Garden Influence and Redbud Native Plant Nursery provided invaluable expertise, Garden Influence donated additional woodland plants, and Friends of Glen Providence Park donors funded the deer fencing, posts, food and coffee for volunteers, and other supplies for this project. Neighbors of the park allowed us to run a hose downhill from their house to water the plantings. We are grateful to all of these people for making the plantings possible!

The next time you are on the 1941 Trail, look for these native plants, and check out the photos below – just click on any for a closer look or to scroll through them.

Woodland plants:

Christmas Fern, Polystichum acrostichoides – 10
New York Fern, Thelypteris noveboracensis – 2
Wild Ginger, Asarum canadense – 6
Wild Columbine, Aquilegia canadensis – 8
Sweet Cicely, Myrrhis odorata – 2
Blue Wood Aster, Aster cordifolius – 2
Spiderwort, Tradescantia – 2
Blue mistflower, Conoclinium coelestinum – 2

Photos by author, George Tate, & Marcia Tate

There’s something new in the Glen Providence woods… yesterday we installed 14 trail posts! Placed at the beginnings and ends of trails, and at some junctions, they show trail names, distances, and paint blaze colors. The posts were created and installed by Friends of Glen Providence Park volunteers, with the approval of Delaware County Parks & Recreation, and funded by our generous donors!

The trails are the Mountain Laurel Trail, Ice House Trail, Scouts Loop, Switchback, 1941 Trail, Shingle Mill Trail, and a shortcut! You can see them on our historically annotated trail map, which we will update soon to show the trail colors.

Our Board Member Rick Sleutaris did a beautiful job creating these trail posts, which were inspired by those installed by Friends of Ridley Creek State Park and Friends of the Wissahickon. Donations to Friends of Glen Providence Park made made it possible to pay for the supplies for these posts, and for the machine time for Rick to carve the lettering at NextFab.

A tremendous thank you to Rick, our wonderful volunteers who installed them on a Sunday afternoon (including Rick’s son!), our donors, and Delaware County Parks & Recreation. We are excited about the visual difference the posts make in the park, and we hope this will encourage park users to explore all of its trails!

Photos of the installation crew and some of the trail posts…

Photos by author. Additional photo by George Tate.

Since Glen Providence Park was established as a bird sanctuary and arboretum in 1935, Girl and Boy Scouts have been a part of its narrative! The day after work began on the park, a November 1, 1935 article in the Chester Times invited the reader to “Come with your bird glasses, your flower guides, your tree books. Bring the school children and scout groups, and let Nature teach them her ancient lessons.” The Scouts heeded that call, with accounts of Girl and Boy Scouts from across Delaware County visiting the park since the 1930’s.

Articles through the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s recount how Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Brownies, and Cub Scouts held picnics, cookouts, meetings, and ceremonies in the park, including new troop investitures and “a court of awards.” In September 1939, a Rutledge Cub pack had a meeting where “An interesting nature program was presented, which included a spirited contest on trees”(!). That October, a Lansdowne Girl Scout troop took a field trip to the “Bird Sanctuary.” 

Volunteerism

In addition to the many meetings and activities, the Scouts have a record of volunteerism in Glen Providence Park. In 1970, a dozen Upper Providence Boy Scouts conducted a major cleanup behind what was then Skelly contracting and Media Laundry, above the Mountain Laurel Trail – they “piled up enough trash for several truckloads in the park below the guardhouse.” In 1971, as part of a Boy Scout “Conservation Good Turn” program, Minquas District Boy Scouts cleaned up “creeks, streams, and roadways,” in parks including Glen Providence. “The Anti-Litter Day campaign” had the administrative support of the newly formed Chester-Ridley-Crum Watersheds Association. This was a predecessor of CRC’s Annual Streams Cleanup, which is in its 18th year, and still involves many Scouts troops!

In 2005, Kathryn Lenahan from Girl Scout Troop 907 took on an individual project that honored the intent of the park’s dedication as a bird sanctuary. A Penncrest High School graduating senior, she earned a Girl Scouts Gold Award for “designing and building a bird blind for people to enjoy birdlife.” Sadly the bird blind (a small shelter from which you can observe wildlife) near the Kirk Lane entrance was destroyed several years ago, possibly by a fallen limb. We marked its approximate location on our annotated trail map.

It is a possibility that in the 1930’s or 1940’s, the Scouts may have planted a number of trees in the park. We have not found confirmation of this, but we know that the Norway Spruce trees that cover much of the western hill were planted, seemingly since 1935, and that Boy Scouts had planted White Pines along nearby Ridley Creek Road around 1932. We would love to learn more about the Norway Spruce planting!

There is one Norway Spruce in the park that we know was planted by Cub Scouts. Sadly, the tree was planted in 1991 in memory of a Cub Scout from Pack 642.

Scouts today

The involvement of Scouts in the park continues. In 2012 and 2013, we attended a meeting in the park with 3rd grade Brownie Troop 5248 to talk about the Scouts’ history in the park, and the plants and wildlife – then they helped us with a park cleanup and with plantings around the stage! In 2014, the Minquas District Boy Scouts held a spring cleanup in the park with Media Rotary and Penncrest Interact. And just this month, we participated in a meeting in the park with 6th grade Girl Scout Troop 5037 to talk about the park and environmental stewardship, and about ideas for their Silver Award projects next year.

In honor of all that the Scouts have done in the park through the years, on our September 2011 annotated trail map, we nicknamed the park trail along Kirk Lane the Scouts Loop!

If anyone has more information about, or photos of, Scouts and their projects in the park, please contact us via email (using the Contact Us link) or by leaving a comment on this page.

Sources

Chester Times & Daily Times articles researched on the Newspaper Archives of Delaware County Library:

Chester Times:
Club Leaders See New County Park, November 1, 1935
Rutledge Cub Pack No. 7, September 27, 1939
October Days in Lansdowne, October 14, 1939
Rutledge, May 7, 1949
Eight Brownies Get Their ‘Wings’, June 10, 1950
18 Girl Scouts Attend Cookout, October 27, 1950
Media Girl Scouts, October 25, 1951
Ridley Park WSCS Plans Luncheon, June 6, 1955
Troop Enjoys Wiener Roast, October 31, 1957

Daily Times:
Girl Scouts Go Camping, April 16, 1960
Leaders of Patrols Selected, October 27, 1964
Boy Scouts help clean up Glen Providence Park area, December 1, 1970
Scouts to collect litter, June 4, 1971

And:

RTM Honors Girl Scout Gold Award Winner, County Press, May 31, 2005

Back in 2010, with a young family, we had just bought our first home; a 100 year old house on the outskirts of Media. To say I had been an apprehensive home buyer would have been a tremendous understatement. We left a huge apartment with a beautiful classic wood interior a couple blocks from downtown Ardmore. I truly loved living in Ardmore and greatly appreciated the freedom of not being responsible for any maintenance issues that popped up, but my family had grown and it was time for a second floor and a yard.

Just after moving in and incurring those initial costs, one after another, I, like many first time home buyers, started second guessing what had been by far the largest purchase of my life. What had seemed charming, quaint, and classic when originally buying the house, I now feared might just be old, worn, and dilapidated. Not being very handy, I was concerned about owning a money pit that would detract from our ability to travel and vacation in nature as my wife and I had so freely done just a few short childless years ago.

In addition to being able to walk to town and the now-questioned charm of the house, one of the main reasons we had bought this house was the proximity to nature.

That first Saturday morning I took Kailey, my oldest daughter, then just barely 3, for a walk in nearby Glen Providence Park. After we entered through the clearing with a smattering of trees, we meandered down wooded switchbacks that had me indulging in the nostalgia of backpacking and canoeing trips with my own father in my youth. With the cover from spring foliage in full force, by the time we were halfway down the switchback, this pocket of woods just outside of town felt as though we could have been deep in a secluded forest. When the trail opened up onto a large pond, we took the opportunity to sit with, watch, and listen to nature. There were all the typical sights and sounds of a park: birds darting from here to there, frogs croaking in the pond, butterflies fluttering about, and so on.

Then we saw whom we ever since have referred to as “Harry the Heron.” He was a beautiful Great Blue Heron. We watched as he strolled along the opposite edge of the pond, until his focus zeroed in on a spot just a few inches into the water. Slowly he moved closer and closer, and then, like an arrow being released from a bow, his head and beak shot out and struck a frog. My daughter stayed fixated and amazed as he first consumed the frog and then returned to patrolling the banks of the pond. We continued to watch as Harry tracked down and caught a few more prey items. It was in that moment that I found a sense of comfort with our recent purchase. Seeing this experience through her fresh eyes, I realized we did not need to take our daughters on an African Safari, down the Amazon, or to Yellowstone for them to see and appreciate nature. If we were quiet and patient, we had all that beauty, those scenes and stories, unfolding in our own backyard…in Glen Providence Park.

It was to be the beginning of the wonderful appreciation of nature just blossoming within her.

Dylan Atkins is a Board Member of Friends of Glen Providence Park. He gives credit to his daughter Kailey for editing this piece with him.

Individuals from the Friends of Glen Providence Park attended the second public meeting for Delaware County’s Open Space Plan on Tuesday March 12, 2013.  Delaware County Planning recently posted the meeting’s presentation files on its website, giving those who did not attend the Public Forum the opportunity to review and comment on the long range concept plans for six County parks, including Glen Providence Park.

Public feedback is an important element in the Open Space Plan process, and County Planning, County Parks & Recreation, and the consultants are thoughtfully considering comments and feedback.

There is a significant change proposed for the Glen Providence Park pond and Broomall’s Run, outlined below- please take the time to review the Concept Sketch for Glen Providence Park, and provide your feedback to County Planning. While there is no specific deadline, we recommend replying no later than Friday, May 3.

We have included a guide and links to the three sections of the presentation that are posted on the County website.  If you have any comments, ideas, or suggestions regarding the County parks plans, please email them to Senior Planner, Steven R. Beckley, AICP at BeckleyS@co.delaware.pa.us, or print and fill out the evaluation form used at the Forum and return it to the address, fax, or e-mail listed at the bottom.

The 3 Presentation sections are as follows:

– Timing & Objectives: the list of objectives is thoughtful and excellent.  There are additional Public Meetings planned for Fall 2013 and January 2014 to review Final Drawings and Draft Recommendations, then a Final Public Meeting to present the Plan.

– Needs Assessment, Survey Findings, Values & Philosophy, The Big Picture and Trends: All of the public feedback so far emphasizes the need to preserve natural open spaces in Delaware County, and prioritizes passive use such as hiking trails.

– Specific Park Proposals include Concept Sketches for Glen Providence Park and other parks
 

There are some significant proposals made for Glen Providence Park:

Please refer to the PDF of the Concept Sketch for Glen Providence Park, and give the County feedback on the following proposed changes to the park:

– Divert Broomall’s Run through the pond: This is proposed to address ecological and erosion problems at the pond, as we outlined in Upcoming Changes: Pond & Wetlands. Would you want to see the stream adjacent to the pond filled in, and relocated to run through the pond? Do you have any environmental expertise to know whether this would be helpful or harmful to the pond and stream ecology?

– Additional parking lot built at Kirk Lane: Have you ever found the Kirk Lane parking lot to be full? Do you see a need for more parking spaces?  What do you think of the proposed location?

– ADA accessible terrace below the main entrance overlook: Do you feel this would be used? Do you think it would positively or negatively impact the main entrance?

– Children’s Natural Play Area, using natural materials to make features such as stepping stones, walkways, and balance beams near the picnic pavilion: How do your children use the park? Is this a feature you would like to see, or that your children would use?

* May 2, 2013 Update: Please see the comments below for an explanation of why we do not support the first two proposals.
 

Other identified Park Needs & Long Range Ideas include:

– Structure repairs & maintenance
– Trail maintenance standards
– Repair restrooms
– Erosion control
– They are considering our idea to re-establish the Eleanor Reed Butler Waterfall as a recirculating waterfall from the pond!
– Improve signage

Please make any specific comments on County Planning’s evaluation form, and reply to Steven R. Beckley by email, mail, fax or phone.
 
Thank you!

We were delighted and amazed to find a copy of the 1941 Nature Guide to Glen Providence Park in the Media Historic Archives, after reading about it in the June 7, 1941 Chester Times.  It was wonderful on a cool, blustery, beautiful day last Saturday to walk the trail described in the guide, comparing plants and features from 1941 and now!  Along the way we referred to early park photographs and descriptions, while searching for ephemeral spring flowers.

The 1941 Glen Providence Park Supervisor James Stokes wrote, “This guide has been prepared as a seeing eye for nature lovers, in order that they may enjoy the abundance of shrubs, flowers, trees and wild life found in this lovely Glen.”  There are quotes from the Delaware County Park and Recreation Board President Samuel L. Smedley, and National Recreation Association Specialist L.H. Weir.

The self-guided 1941 trail starts by the main entrance on State Street, heading down the sledding hill past the concert stage and turning right along the Ice House Trail towards the Broomall’s Dam waterfall.  Some of the still-existing trees and plants described include Flowering Dogwood, Hemlock, large Sassafras trees, Birch, Skunk Cabbage and Iron wood (Hornbeam).

In 1941, we could have crossed “an arched rustic bridge which commands a beautiful view of the Falls”, to pass a fernery and get to the drinking spring by Broomall’s Dam.  As that bridge fell long ago, we made a stream crossing over the stepping stones, past a scenic view of the wetlands fed by the numerous natural springs along Broomall’s Run. We made our way near the drinking spring, and saw the emerging Bloodroot flowers along the trail where indicated by the 1941 Guide.  We first spotted the Bloodroot on April 3 this year during this cold spring, 17 days later than last year’s warm spring!

By the pond is the lovely but now-dry Eleanor Reed Butler waterfall, and in the pond we saw turtles and fish- but it would be two days before the American Toads first emerged.   We took the lower Shingle Mill Trail to its end along Broomall’s Run, where there was once a children’s wading pool with “a very fine view of meadowland” stretching to Ridley Creek Road.  There was also a 100′ rustic footbridge over the marsh and stream!  Still growing is an “Oddity of Nature – nine trees growing from one central root of a Sycamore tree.”

In the absence of the footbridge, we made another stream crossing and connected with the lower Mountain Laurel Trail,  abundant with the state flower Mountain Laurel, and an enchanting patch of Partridge Berry on a fallen tree.  The 1941 trail ends at the pavilion, near our Earth Day Plantings.

While it was a late-blooming Spring, it was beautiful to get a clear view of the park’s landscape with early Spring colors, before the foliage emerges. Thank you to the 14 adults, 2 lovely children and the delightful dog who joined us on our walk!

You can view the PDF version of the 1941 Nature Guide to Glen Providence Park, and you can view and print our Annotated Trail Map with trail names and historical annotations!

Join us for our Early Spring Cleanup in Glen Providence Park!  This is the first of our three main volunteer days we have scheduled this year: the next two are CRC Watersheds Annual Streams Cleanup in May, and National Public Lands Day in September.  We also have regular Invasive Plant Removal Days – see our 2013 Schedule of Events for more information on our volunteer days and nature walks!

Early Spring Clean-up!

Saturday, March 16
rain date Sunday, March 17
9:00-11:30am
Glen Providence Park – main entrance

Friday night update:  Due to the forecast of rain & possibly snow(!), we will use the rain date of Sunday, March 17 at 9am.  We’ll provide Seven Stones coffee!

Projects:

In this cleanup, we will tackle a few projects- you can choose where you want to help!

– Stage Cleanup: We will clear the concert stage of winter debris, to start preparing for this summer’s concert series!
– Invasives Removal!  Help keep the trails clear and give the native plants some room to grow.
– Large trash: We have spotted a few tires in unlikely locations, let’s dig them out and remove them!
– Trail Cleanup: Of course, there is always trash clean-up- early spring is a good time to tackle trash that has blown into odd spots, before the vegetation grows!

Logistics:

Meet at the Glen Providence Park main entrance on West State Street in Media at 9:00 am. Bring gloves if you have them.  Additional gloves generously provided by CRC Watersheds Association.  We recommend long pants and long sleeves to protect against poison ivy and ticks.
– If you’d like to tackle trash along the streambank, wear water shoes, boots, or old shoes!
– If you’d like to help remove invasives, bring pruners if you have them.
– If you’d like to help remove some tires, bring a shovel!

Rain plan:
Our rain date is Sunday, March 17 at 9:00 am. If the weather is not clear, we will post here and on our facebook wall by 8:45 am Saturday advising whether we will use the rain date.

To add this event to your favorite calendar program (iCal, Outlook, Google, etc.), view the event listing on our calendar.

We didn’t get any substantial snowfall in Glen Providence Park this winter, but we did get several dustings and light coverings- enough for some friendly snowmen to emerge in the park, and for a few days of sledding!  And of course the woods look just magical with a coating of snow.  Add winter lighting and you have some beautiful hikes….

We headed out in the cold for our second year participating in the Christmas Bird Count in December, and our Winter Tree Identification in January.  We even ventured out in the rain for our Naturalist Walk & Talk in February, and the woods were lovely!  The intrepid Media Providence Friends School students continued to use the park as an outdoor classroom for science, service learning, and even for Mindfulness exercises!

The weather was erratic with January’s temperatures all over the map- ranging from a frigid 12 degrees to a balmy 68!  But with reptiles and amphibians in hibernation, there are birds and mammals to see.  One particularly fun bird to watch (if you can spot it despite its camouflage!) is the adorable Brown Creeper: it spirals its way up a tree eating bark insects, then virtually drops to the base of the tree to start up again.   To see what birds to expect in winter, see our winter bird sightings on eBird.

Valentine’s Day seemed like the tipping point for winter, with a beautiful coating of fresh snow rapidly melting- and we noticed buds on American Beech and Silver Maple.  After that, wildlife activity started picking up- with a number of birds singing in the park one late February morning, despite it being 26 degrees and breezy!   We saw an American Crow gathering twigs for a nest, and we had a report of a Muskrat swimming in the pond under the ice, the same week we were finding possible muskrat tracks along Broomall’s Run.

Winter is a great time to admire the structure of trees, and there are plants that are interesting year-round, like the Smooth Alder on the pond’s island with its catkins and cone-like fruit, elegant Mountain Laurel on the eastern hill, and mosses on the forest floor.  We started the 1.1 Acre Project to study and document the species in the construction area for the 3rd Street Dam- so that will be a parallel photojournal through the year!

You can scroll through our pictures below, and you can also view them with descriptions on our brand-new flickr page!  You can see more pictures in our facebook albums and in our photojournal.

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