Earth Day 2025

 Hello!

Today we celebrated Earth Day on Rosemont Campus. I was really excited to help plan and participate in a variety of activities across campus today. Coming back from Easter break to a beautiful, 75 degree sunny day, with gardening and environmental activities happening all around school was really delightful. 

At 11am, several students, staff and faculty members gathered at the future site for the Patrick Herman Memorial Vegetable garden to till the soil and dig trenches for the raised beds to be placed.

The digging of this area was such a delightful and meaningful way to spend the morning, and it was lovely to see such a big turn out of so many students from so many different classes, who all have been coming together to make this vegetable garden happen. Before we got to digging, the vice president of the Rosegrow Environmental Coalition, Pearl Smith, and I watered our vegetable starts and native plants.

So many more vegetables are beginning! We have tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sweat peas, snap peas, arugula, habanero peppers and bell peppers which have sprouted so far (and more to come)! Our native plants, of which we have: bleeding hearts, Virginia blue bells, mountain laurel, asters, foam flowers, phlox, wild ginger (and more to come!) are all looking lovely and healthy and ready to be planted in the new re-wilded native plant garden outside of Connelly Hall on May 1st. 

After the prepping of the Patrick Herman Vegetable Garden, the Sophmore Tree Planting took place. This is a Rosemont tradition that goes back many years, and recently has taken place as part of our Earth Day celebrations. There are trees all over Rosemont Campus that have been planted by different Sophmore classes, and they make up a good amount of beautiful and ecologically diverse foliage on campus. 

This year, the Sophmore tree for Rosemont, class of 2027, is a native redbud tree! It was planted in the lawn outside of our beautiful chapel. 

After the tree planting, there were many more different activities on campus, culminating in our Rosegrow Environmental Coalition Natural Dyeing activity! 

We met in the Marshall Garden outside of the Gertrude Kistler Memorial Library, and we set up tables with turmeric dye and hibiscus dye, and invited students, staff and faculty to either bring their own items for dyeing, or use some we had donated. In addition to the natural dyes, we had fabric paints and stencils for additional decorating. 

It was a wonderful day, and I was proud to have the opportunity to showcase the work I've done, and to highlight the amazing work my peers have done this semester! It was really great to see all of our campus celebrating our home together; our home that is Earth, and our home that is this wonderful school. Everyday we continue to work on these projects, like the Patrick Herman Memorial Vegetable Garden, and continue to celebrate our import Rosemont history and unique culture, with activities like the Sophmore tree planting, we show everyone the mantra I've been repeating: 

We matter. Our work matters.

To cap the day off with a delightful afternoon activity, making t-shirts, listening to music, and eating good food in good company gave us an important moment of celebration. This is, of course, part of gardening; you plant the seeds and you can reap what you've sowed. We have created an amazing, dedicated community, and today really showed that. 

With the losses that are hitting our community, it's so important to hold tight to values, to protect what matters, and have fun with each other, in the time and space we have left, whenever and however we can.

The next event I and other Rosegrow members will be participating is our May Day celebration! This is going to be an amazing event with many different highlights, but I'm most excited for the planting and unveiling of our native plant garden next to Connelly Hall. 

I hope to see you all there! Let's celebrate together, and make our home a better place!

Xx Mia Hoppel, Sustainability Intern 

It is not enough to have begun well; you must also persevere, and finish with resolution.

 Hello!

On March 9th, we had our campus wide Climate Teach-In. This event celebrates the history of Earth Day, which began as a college event in the 60s, during which students and Professors walked out of classes, gathered together with other members of the community, and invited each person to share what they knew about the environment. It began as an opportunity to learn from one and other, and to help make our planet better by understanding the perspectives of others and coming together as a community.

Today, Bard College started promoting campus wide Climate Teach-Ins to celebrate the spirit of the original Earth Day, and to begin to to create an interdisciplinary approach to tackling climate change; because it is a problem that needs to be solved by every person, in every walk of life. Rosemont College has been a proud participant in these Climate Teach-Ins for many years. 

On the 9th, we hosted our Climate Teach-In in Rotwitt Theater. We had two different business classes present on how sustainable work plays into business leadership, we had many, many posters created by students and Professors discussing different aspects of sustainability, and I spoke about by work this semester as the Sustainability Intern and as the student president of the Rosegrow Environmental Coalition. 

Each of these posters was unique, and each of them highlighted the amazing work done by students, staff, and faculty across campus.

We also had archive materials brought out by our head librarian and archivist Chelsea Frank, giving insight into the history of gardening and of sustainability work on Rosemont Campus. 

We  raffled off a basket (with the proceeds going to Rosegrow) which I won! (I promise I didn't rig the pull; I'm just lucky like that). 

After the raffle, poster viewing, student presentations, and my speech, we invited everyone to come outside, view the Greenhouse, which now contains our seed starts and our native plants for the Connelly Garden, to view the work that has been done so far on the Patrick Herman Memorial Vegetable Garden, and finally, to get their hands dirty with us, and plant some seeds in the Greenhouse. 

Even President Jim Cawley got to work, planting habanero peppers!

It was a beautiful day, and the theater was full of staff, faculty, students, alumni, and other community members, coming together to make our campus more sustainability, and to support each other in all of our endeavors. 

We had several people, staff and student alike, join Rosegrow Environmental Coalition after hearing about the work that we had done and the work that we planned to do! Seeing this continued commitment from our campus community to work towards sustainable development, and work towards making our campus more beautiful and more environmentally friendly, gives me hope for our future. 

One of our members, Sydney Coleman, even came to the event before her own Senior Art Exhibit Opening, which was then attended by almost everyone who came to the Climate Teach-In; this itself shows our commitment to one and other, and how our students, staff and faculty have continued to show up for each othe

Sydney Coleman, Senior Art Show.

In my speech, I highlighted this quote by Cornelia Connelly, our founder:

"It is not enough to have begun well; you must also persevere, and finish with resolution."

These are words I am trying to live by, as we are approaching the finish of Rosemont College, and words I am encouraging every member of Rosemont's community to hold dear to them. Now is not the time to give up. Now is the time to finish with resolution.

Xx Mia Hoppel, Sustainability Intern