Help Nurture Nature Center’s Garden to Grow!

Nurture Nature Center in Easton, PA is a dynamic center for community learning that uses science, art, and dialogue programs to get the community talking and thinking critically about local environmental risks. Since its opening in 2011, NNC has hosted thousands of visitors for its programs, including shows on its noted Science on a Sphere exhibit. NNC's newest project, the Urban Recycle Garden, is a chance to bring the community together to create a new exhibit that will help local residents grow food and transform their own urban spaces. NNC is seeking business partners to contribute to this demonstration garden, which will use recycled and found materials to showcase growing techniques for urban areas (walls, balconies, small paved spaces), so that people can learn how to grow their food and/or beautify their urban spaces. The techniques demonstrated will be low cost and easy to replicate, and will also include ways to manage stormwater in urban areas.

This project will help urban residents and local business create a greener and more beautiful community, one container or trellis at a time! Please help us grow this fantastic garden by making a contribution and spreading the word to friends and family.

Learn more and donate at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/urbanrecyclegarden/nurture-nature-centers-urban-recycle-garden.  Pledges must be made by May 25 to count toward our campaign, and early donations help build momentum for the campaign. Donations of $100 or more will be recognized on a plaque at the garden.  Donate today! 

An abbreviated sentence about the garden is: Nurture Nature Center’s newest exhibit, the Urban Recycle Garden, is an educational demonstration garden that will showcase unique and low-cost methods for growing food and managing storm water in urban communities. This project will help communities to transform the urban landscape one container or trellis at a time!

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Allentown Chamber of Commerce - February Letter from the President

This article originally appeared in the February issue of The Chamber's monthly publication, Connections. Written by:
Bob Buck
Buckno, Lisicky & Company
Allentown Chamber President
610-821-8580 • rbuck@blco-cpa.com

Can we really handle the change? Downtown Allentown will be a vastly different place in a few years. I recently found a poster from years back, depicting various cultural and commercial highlights of our city. It brought back nostalgia for a time when the center of the city was a very much a sought after destination. About the same time, I also found an old board game (remember those?) called “All About Allentown.” I instantly recalled having to navigate the multitude of one-way streets and having loop ‘round and ‘round to get from Zollinger’s to the First National Bank, then from Leh’s over to Hess’s as my pretend car traveled downtown.

Today, very few of those highlights remain. There is PPL (or PP&L!), of course, the soldiers and sailors monument, the Liberty Bell Shrine at Zion’s  Reformed Church, Allentown Art Museum and Symphony Hall, and not much else. As I talk to many in the business community about the excitement of crowds and increased traffic soon returning to downtown, there is much trepidation and concern as to traffic flow and parking. Well, let’s look a little closer at that old poster and game.

There are all of those two, three, and even four lane one-way streets - very annoying for a kid’s board game - but very efficient for moving large amounts of traffic. Coupled with the new American Parkway Bridge, entry and egress should be a breeze. And although the gleaming Hess’s department store no longer remains, that unusual snail-shell object attached to it surely does. That’s the parking deck with its 700-plus spaces which combined with newly erected parking as well as existing decks at the transportation and government center to provide a glut of available parking for the new offices, residential units and arena.

How easy it is to forget the large amounts of people working and shopping in center city just a short time ago. Maybe the glamour of a world-class department store is gone, but the hold-overs from the city’s past glory days remain, and we’ll soon welcome many new visitors into Allentown. These are the good old days!

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