Environmental Education Program
Each year, the Chesapeake Ecology Center (CEC) Native Plant Demonstration Gardens take on more definition, and our community outreach activities increase. CEC members, countless volunteers, students, teachers, and counselors install and maintain a range of native plant gardens to both learn and show residents of the Chesapeake Bay watershed how to landscape in an environmentally friendly manner. The CEC assists and receives assistance from a variety of community groups and public entities. We provide tours and work hands-on with numerous groups.
Robert Pyle once stated, "People who don’t know, don’t care." Personalized tours allow visitors to observe and learn how they can create Bay-friendly planting areas on their own property, and how to convert low-value lawn to natural systems. Kiosks and handouts at the various demonstration gardens instruct the numerous visitors that take self-guided tours. The gardens and associated on-the-ground environmental education program for students, teachers, counselors, and the public aim to promote stewardship of our natural resources and to bring more human diversity to the environmental arena.
In the fall of 2003, the Chesapeake Ecology Center began participation in the Meaningful Bay Experience Program. In collaboration with the administration and teachers at each school, we have worked with the following three schools: Adams Academy Middle, Bates Middle, and Mills-Parole Elementary.
We assist schools in integrating ecology with traditional areas of study by providing teachers with technical assistance in developing, implementing, and maintaining schoolyard habitats that restore and protect the environment, while at the same time, provide living classrooms. We work with teachers to help them utilize the schoolyard habitats as on-going teaching tools, tied to their curriculum.
We are deeply indebted to our sponsors, numerous volunteers, partners, and supporters.
Funding Partners:
Other partners:
- Adams Academy at Adams Park Middle School
- Alliance for Sustainable Communities
- Annapolis Environmental Commission
- Annapolis GreenScape Program
- Anne Arundel County Master Gardeners
- Anne Arundel County NAACP
- Anne Arundel County Public School System
- Anne Arundel County Stewardship Work Group
- Anne Arundel County Waste Management Services
- Anne Arundel Green Party
- Balanced Life Skills
- Bates Middle School
- Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation
- Calvary United Methodist Church
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation
- Chesapeake Children’s Museum
- Clay Street Computer Learning Center
- Juvenile Drug Court Program
- Maryland Conservation Corps
- Maryland Department of Natural Resources
- Maryland’s Lower Western Shore Tributary Team
- Merkle Direct Marketing Inc.
- Mills-Parole Elementary School
- Naval Academy Midshipmen
- Severn River Association
- Single Volunteers of Baltimore and Annapolis
- Spa Creek Conservancy
- Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis
- University of Maryland Gemstones
Other Links
Non-Profit Environmental Organizations
- Alliance for the
Chesapeake Bay - Center for Watershed Protection
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF)
- Environmental Concern
- Maryland Native Plant Society
- National Wildlife Federation
- National Audubon Society
- Oyster Recovery Partnership
- Severn River Association
- Severn River Land Trust
- Sierra Club
Government Environmental Links
- Chesapeake Bay Program
- Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR)
- US Fish & Wildlife Service - Chesapeake Bay Field Office
- State of Maryland Water Permit Applications (MDE)
Environmental Information
- Home and Garden Information Center http://www.hgic.umd.edu
For home gardening and landscape questions via the Home and Garden Hotline: 800-342-2507, 8 am-1 pm, Mon.-Fri., and through a Q&A email service on the home page. An outreach program of the University of Maryland Cooperative Extension. - NBC 4's Watershed Page
- Flora of the Washington-Baltimore Area (DC Checklist)
- Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring (EPA)
Community Links
Rainscaping with
Rain Gardens
download pdf here. (2.9mb)
Ecoscaping Back to the
Future... Restoring
Chesapeake Landscapes
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