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