SOLEBURY: Preserve to celebrate Earth Day

By Linda Seida, Staff Writer
   SOLEBURY — In advance of Earth Day next week, the Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve will hold a volunteer-powered cleanup Saturday to benefit the environment.
   The event, called Celebrate Earth Day, will be held from 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. on April 16 at the wildflower preserve, 1635 River Road, Solebury, south of New Hope.
   The preserve welcomes all types of volunteers, whether they are individuals, families or groups banding together with a common purpose.
   Upon arrival Saturday, visitors will first sign in for any number of diverse projects.
   Coffee will be available.
   Volunteers can participate in a general cleanup of the grounds, or they can choose to help with the gritting and resurfacing of the trails.
   Volunteers also can sign up to help remove such invasive species as multiflora rose and garlic mustard. The removal of invasive species will prevent them from overcoming the area’s native species.
   Volunteers also can sign up to help to propagate native plants in the wildflower preserve’s nursery.
   The Preserve consists of 134 acres and features more than 800 species of native plants.
   The native plant nursery is a housed on an acre of the preserve and is used to grow native plants in containers. The young plants are later planted on the grounds and also sold to the public during annual spring and fall plant sales. The plants sales are held yearly on Mother’s Day weekend and also the following weekend.
   There are more than 200 species of native wildflowers offered in the sales, with all proceeds of plant and seed sales going toward the preserve’s operating expenses.
   The Preserve’s seed catalogue can be found at: www.bhwp.org/cms/files/file_ID101781.pdf.
   All the plants are propagated in the nursery, and they are native to New Jersey, Pennsylvania and surrounding areas. None of the plants are taken from the wild.
   The Preserve says it produces more than 16,000 plants each year, most by seed, others by cuttings or division. They include trees, shrubs, ferns, vines and perennials.
   For more information on Celebrate Earth Day at the wildflower preserve or to participate, volunteers should contact the volunteer coordinator, Kathleen Muth, at [email protected] or call the preserve at 215-862-2924.
   Earth Day is Friday, April 22. The first Earth Day was held in 1970 and drew the participation of about 20 million people across the country. It was founded by Gaylord Anton Nelson, a United States senator from Wisconsin, to foster a greater understanding of the environment and the effect humans have on it.