About The Chesapeake Ecology Center

The CEC works with its members, volunteers, community groups, teachers and students—including at-risk students at Adams Academy at Adams Park (where we are based)—to provide environmental education and, at the same time, develop on-the-ground habitat restoration/protection projects.  The CEC holds volunteer education/planting days, beginning mid-April through November. Over three dozen community and school groups have participated in planting and maintenance activities at the CEC.  We provide technical assistance to a variety of community and school groups for their projects, and we have a special College Creek watershed focus.  In addition to numerous on-the-ground restoration projects at the CEC and elsewhere, we promote conservation landscaping through various media, including published magazine articles, our new book Ecoscaping Back to the Future…Restoring Chesapeake Landscapes, television and radio interviews, the CEC website and quarterly newsletter, and through presentations and tours of the CEC’s 20 Native Plant Demonstration Gardens and Sites.

The CEC’s first annual 2005 Garden Open House, attended by close to 300 people, was such a great success that we will hold a Garden Open House each fall.  The CEC has given numerous garden tours and presentations on conservation landscaping—especially on creating rain gardens—to groups from Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and even to visitors from Japan. 

Each of the 20 Native Plant Demonstration Gardens and Sites has signage to facilitate self-guided tours.  Visitors are often seen touring and photographing the gardens, and collecting information from the handout boxes.  We provide guided tours, by appointment. 

The gardens and associated environmental education programs for students and the public promote stewardship of natural resources, bring more human diversity to the environmental arena by partnering with a variety of groups, including those in underserved communities, and promote a “sense of place” for the Chesapeake Bay watershed through the use of plants native to the region. 

CEC Brochure