Living Landscapes

We advocate, educate, encourage and inspire our Phoenixville area community by assisting in developing healthier growing spaces. This includes using environmentally safe gardening practices, encouraging the use of native, edible and medicinal plants. Living space may include a yard, pots, walls, square foot gardening, permaculture, composting, and pruning. To Grow with us, click here to send us an email.

Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences's Ag Progress Days, held annually during three days in August, is Pennsylvania’s largest outdoor agricultural exposition. With over 400 exhibitors from the United States and Canada, there is something for everyone to enjoy at no cost as parking and admission are free. The show is hosted by Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences and showcases educational programs, current research, and the latest innovations in agricultural equipment and technology. Learn more here.

98 Native Plant seeds are now over wintering in a garden bed. The group came to fill pots, plant seeds & shared some as well as kept many for the Spring planting. We learned to mix soil with compost (70% soil and 30% compost from Back to Earth Compost). Shannon Zabko offered her knowledge, Maria G. offered her backyard, Shalee F. secured the soil and the workshop happened. We met new people and enjoyed the gathering.

Let us know if you have any ideas for future workshops and for our Neighborhood Gardening & Sharing projects.

Charlene Briggs led about fifteen folks at Reservoir Community Garden to identify and use common weeds for food and medicine. Here she is teaching about goldenrod.

Transition‘s Living Landscapes is one of nine local groups sponsoring the Gardening Around the Village monthly series hosted by Pxv Library and sponsored by Communities That Care.

Charlene Briggs adds grated beeswax to a comfrey oil infusion to make a salve and later leads participants to roll their own throat lozenge made from slippery elm bark. Charlene presented at the October monthly meeting of Living Landscapes Working Group of Pxv Area Transition, held at the HEART Center on Hall Street. Information-packed presentation!

At Reservoir Community Garden, Martha Cownap, herbalist at Camphill Kimberton Village, kept Transition Living Landscapes folk enthralled on Friday evening August 27, 2021, showing how to use, make, and beware of common and not so common herbs we can find or grow in our backyards.

PXVCommuniTEA Launched

Maria Jordan, a coordinator at Phoenixville Area Community Services (PACS), received a dozen bags of “PXVCommuniTEA” last Friday to share with those who come to pick up food supplies.

The week before, volunteers from Phoenixville Area Transition (PAT) assembled and packaged 200 individual tea bags from the dried leaves of Tulsi (Holy Basil) harvested from the new medicinal herb garden at Reservoir Community Garden, a project of the Living Landscapes work group of PAT. 

Charlene Briggs, founder of the herb garden, who teaches sustainable community design at Temple University, envisions more projects to come from the focus on medicinal herbs. Recently she presented “Meals and Medicines from the Landscape” on Phoenixville Library’s online Adult series, “Gardening Around the Village”.  She encourages us to cultivate or forage for plants known sometimes as “weeds”. 

Many thanks to local artist Victoria O’Neill for the beautiful logo and labels for PXVCommuniTEA.

VICTORY OVER THE VIRUS GARDENS!

10 gallon patio pots planted with organic plants were available this spring from Jack’s Farm at the Phoenixville Farmers Market early this summer. Part of the proceeds were donated to Phoenixville Area Transition to support the Giving Garden at Reservoir Park Community Garden and the Urban Meadows Project. Satisfied customers pick up their "Victory Over the Virus" container garden pot from the HEART Center, a project of Living Landscapes and Colonial Gardens Nursery.  The lawn sign was designed by Transition friends from Coatesville.

The mission of the Living Landscapes Work group is to encourage gardening in our local community using life-enhancing environmental practices.

We envision the Phoenixville Area as a garden community, its lawns transformed with beautiful, pollinating, and edible plants. We envision gardens growing in front and back yards, in public places, in pots on porches, and anywhere one can connect with nature, the soil, and our neighbors.

Community involvement is essential. We are seeking to build a volunteer pool of people with varied levels of skills who can actively participate in the development, design and establishment of a green, healthy environment. Skills may include, but are not limited to, garden design, knowledge of horticulture, back yard flower and / or vegetable gardening. Involvement does not matter if you are a beginner and wish to learn or have experience and wish to share with others.

Gardening Projects in Stages of Growth

• St. Peter’s Place

• St. Ann’s Parish

• The HEART Community Garden

• Hall Street Neighborhood Garden

• Reservoir Community Garden

Monthly meetings with potluck refreshments: Sacred Heart Church Hall, Last Friday of the month 6:30-8:30 PM Access from Church Street or Hall Street parking lot.

To Grow with us, click here to send us an email.

Transition‘s Living Landscapes is one of nine local groups sponsoring the Gardening Around the Village monthly series hosted by Pxv Library and sponsored by Communities That Care.