The Friends of the Cresheim Trail
The Friends of the Cresheim Trail
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Love Your Park: Cresheim Trail Fall Planting Sat 11/15

October 31, 2025 / Friends of the Cresheim Trail / Updates

The colors are blazing and things are getting real spooky, so it must be FALL PLANTING TIME. Lucky for us, we have a whole bunch of plants to put in the ground, and the date has been set: Join us Saturday, November 15th, as we expand our ecological restoration zone once again, filling in gaps […]

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Cresheim Valley Drive Cleanup, Sat 10/18

September 29, 2025 / Friends of the Cresheim Trail / Updates, Work Days

Friends of the Cresheim Trail is happy to invite YOU to join us and all our Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill friends for the fall cleanup of Cresheim Valley Drive. It’s coming Saturday, October 18th, at 9am. We’ll meet at the Cresheim Valley Pergola, on the corner of Cresheim Valley Drive and Germantown Avenue. (Read […]

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Cresheim Trail Volunteer Workday Sat 7/19

July 1, 2025 / Friends of the Cresheim Trail / Updates, Work Days

Our July volunteer workday should be a good one. The boardwalk, as it will sometimes, needs a little attention with some planks in need of replacement, and one section has started to droop a tad so we’ll reset it. We’d also like to spend a little time under the SEPTA Chestnut Hill West Line bridge, […]

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Sat 6/14 Cresheim Trail volunteer workday CANCELED

June 6, 2025 / Friends of the Cresheim Trail / Updates, Work Days

Sorry folks, the weather for Saturday looks no bueno, so we’ve made the decision to cancel our June volunteer workday. We’ll run it back next month — Saturday July 19th is the target date. We’ll definitely have some vegetation to trim by then, and maaaybe some other top tier trail tasks. Stay tuned, stay dry, […]

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Cresheim Valley Drive Spring Cleanup – Love Your Park – Sat 5/17

May 9, 2025 / Friends of the Cresheim Trail / Updates, Work Days

On Saturday, May 17th, Friends of the Cresheim Trail and our friends in Mt Airy and Chestnut Hill will close Cresheim Valley Drive to traffic between Germantown and Stenton Avenues and take to the streets with trash bags and trash pickers and clean the drive as part of Love Your Park spring festivities. We’ll meet […]

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Recent Posts

  • Love Your Park: Cresheim Trail Fall Planting Sat 11/15
  • Cresheim Valley Drive Cleanup, Sat 10/18
  • Cresheim Trail volunteer workday Sat 9/20
  • Cresheim Trail Volunteer Workday Sun 8/17
  • Cresheim Trail Volunteer Workday Sat 7/19

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Donate to Cresheim Trail online (Square)

We encourage you to join our group by making a donation ($50 suggested) online at our Square page or by mail to:

Friends of the Cresheim Trail
PO Box 4341
Philadelphia, PA  19118

Contact Us

Email: info@cresheimtrail.org

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35 volunteers, 55 bags of trash, 7 bumpers, 5 hubc 35 volunteers, 55 bags of trash, 7 bumpers, 5 hubcaps, 1 whole car, 1 awesome day. We also replaced four planks on the boardwalk, cleared storm drains, and pulled vines from big trees and little tree cages. THANK YOU, VOLUNTEERS! The fall Cresheim Valley Drive cleanup was a great success, all thanks to volunteers, our partners, High Point coffee, and Night Kitchen cookies and muffins still warm from the oven. What a day. Next volunteer outing is Saturday November 15th, our fall planting as part of Love Your Park. More on that soon. #cresheimtrail
Just checked the weather and it looks 100% PERFECT Just checked the weather and it looks 100% PERFECT for the Cresheim Valley Drive cleanup on Saturday. Sunny and high of 66º is the call for taking a walk on a scenic park drive and leaving it just a little bit nicer than before. Fall foliage is just the icing on the cake — or cookies, as the case may be, as @nightkitchenbakery will be providing those and @highpointcafe will provide coffee. 🍪☕️🍂 PLEASE NOTE: We are aware the protest is happening the same day, but for those who wish to, you can easily do both. The cleanup starts at 9am at the Cresheim Valley Pergola (corner of Germantown Avenue), there is a Chestnut Hill West train leaving Richard Allen Lane Station at 11:21am for Center City, and we’ll be walking in that direction anyway. Extra extra special thank yous to all our partners on this cleanup: • @streetsphiladelphia • @philaparkandrec • @mtairytrashteam • @gomtairy • @westmtairyneighbors • @eman19119 • @chestnuthillcommunity • @chconservancy • @chestnuthill_pa • @chestnuthillrotary Remember, if you’re driving, you can park at @chquakermeeting (20 E Mermaid Ln), and these and all Cresheim Trail volunteer hours count for @weaversway members. See you Saturday! #cresheimtrail
One more big shout of gratitude to @chconservancy One more big shout of gratitude to @chconservancy for putting on a spectacular edition of Night of Lights in Chestnut Hill last weekend — and to everyone who stopped by to say hi and check out the Cresheim Trail slideshow. If you missed it, CH Conservancy has kindly uploaded it to Youtube; the link is in our bio. It’s a 9m 41s video without sound, so you can either watch it in silence or put on a 9+ minute song to go along. Some examples include Miles Davis’ “Freddie Freeloader,” the Stone Roses’ “Fools Gold,” Billy Strings’ “Hide and Seek,” Metallica’s “To Live is to Die,” and Phish’s “Limb by Limb” (8/11/98 Star Lake version). Pour a nice cup of coffee, get comfy, and maybe learn something new. #cresheimtrail
TONIGHT: Take a hike up the Hill for @chconservanc TONIGHT: Take a hike up the Hill for @chconservancy Night of Lights. This event turns Germantown Avenue into an outdoor gallery of special architectural lighting, live entertainment, and six slideshows projected in storefronts — including ours. FOCT personnel will be on hand for “Cresheim Trail: Past, Present & Future,” to be shown at 8517 Germantown Avenue. Other slideshows on the Avenue include those by @westmtairyneighbors @allenslaneartcenter @quintessencephl and more. The event begins at 6:30pm with a “flip the switch” ceremony at the Conservancy’s headquarters at 8708 Germantown Avenue, and slideshows will run 7–9pm. If you can’t make it tonight, the slideshows will run the same times tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday (without FOCT personnel). Pretty dang nice day for an evening stroll! ✨
All righty then, we are officially OFFICIAL. The f All righty then, we are officially OFFICIAL. The fall Cresheim Valley Drive cleanup is a little over two weeks away, and we’ve got all our friends together to make this a bona fide community blowout. We’ll meet at the Cresheim Valley Pergola (pic 2), @streetsphiladelphia will once again close the road for us (from 9am to 12pm), and @philaparkandrec will remove the trash we collect. We’ll start our day with caffeinated volunteer fuel from @highpointcafe and sweet treats from @nightkitchenbakery, and we might even have some spiffy CT merch available that morning. We’ll also have all the best community partners out to walk the Drive and enjoy the fall foliage, which ought to be nice and colorful by the 18th. They include: • @chestnuthill_pa • @chestnuthillcommunity • @chconservancy • @chestnuthillrotary • @eman19119 • @westmtairyneighbors • @gomtairy • @mtairytrashteam Come out for an event that’s fun, productive, and extra feelgood. Plus you can hike the trail back to the start, and as with all Cresheim Trail volunteer workdays, @weaversway members can count your working hours. If you drive, please keep parking clear at the farmers market for shoppers. @chquakermeeting has generously offered their parking lot at 20 E Mermaid Lane - and you can shortcut to the meetup spot on the Friends Loop. ––– Our next volunteer workday after this will be the Love Your Park fall planting on the Cresheim Trail, happening Saturday, November 15th.
If you’ve never been to Mermaid Park in Wyndmoor, If you’ve never been to Mermaid Park in Wyndmoor, now’s a good time to check it out. Our friends at @springfieldmontcoparksandrec care for the 7-acre park that’s home to the headwaters of Cresheim Creek. The park was donated to the township by the US Department of Agriculture (whose research facility is still next door) in 1974. Springfield Parks & Rec’s restoration of the park three years ago won a Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence and included dredging the park’s centerpiece pond, planting native plants along the pond’s banks, and the construction of the loop trail the Cresheim Trail will one day connect to. It’s our first destination once we get on the other side of Stenton Avenue. (It’s a few years off but we’re working on it!) Springfield Parks & Rec also recently installed a nesting tower for chimney swifts (pic 2), with help from @pagamecomm, a nice addition to the park that will soon yield real time environmental education and provide a home for the threatened bird. These pics are a look at the plants around the pond, including the gorgeous bald cypress trees that help stabilize soil and filter water.
We talk a lot about native trees, shrubs, and flow We talk a lot about native trees, shrubs, and flowers that call the Cresheim Trail corridor home, but it’s hard to find one more abundant than northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin). Spicebush is a perennial favorite (if you will), filling the understory with subtle but handsome shrubs that grow up to 10–12 feet tall. They’re especially fun to trim back from the trail, as they release a pleasant, “spicy” fragrance when their branches are cut or their leaves are crushed in your fingers. Their small yellow blooms (pic 3) arrive in March, and their fruit starts to develop in summer, ripening into the bright red berries you see on the trail right now. Spicebush berries are edible, with a flavor profile somewhere between floral, black pepper, and citrus, giving it the nickname Appalachian Allspice. They’re a nice complement to an apple or pear cobbler, dehydrated berries make a good tea, and anyone who’s had it will tell you spicebush ice cream is as good as it gets. Keep an eye on the woods over the next month too, as spicebush’s golden yellow is a key contributor to CT fall foliage. #cresheimtrail
Apologies for the belatedness, but how about a big Apologies for the belatedness, but how about a big hand for the 27 volunteers who came out to care for the Cresheim Trail on Saturday! 👏 We had several crews working on several projects, the end result of which sees a spiffed up trailhead and sidewalk at Lincoln Drive & Allens Lane, an improved trail tread through the chunky section just into the woods from Lincoln Drive, proper clearance and sightlines on ALL trails, and an Outdoor Classroom one step closer to official officialness. (More on that later.) Vines were pulled, weeds were whacked, graffiti was cleaned, trash was hauled: six bags, one tire, one chair, and at least one boomerang. ALSO: While the FOCT crew was hard at work, the @philaparkandrec District 4 crew did an *amazing* job in reopening the rail trail corridor the entire way between Germantown and Stenton Avenues. We still need to get back out there to clear the upper connection between Ed’s Loop and the rail trail, but that should be done by the end of the week. So: Thank you Parks & Rec and all volunteers! And shoutout to @septaphilly for prettying up the tunnel under the Chestnut Hill East Line as they finished up their bridge rehab project. Save the date for our next outing — Saturday, October 18th — as the Cresheim Valley Drive fall cleanup is coming. Details to come in the days ahead. Pics from Saturday by Sam, Greg, Pat, and Brad. #cresheimtrail

 

(c) 2025 The Friends of the Cresheim Trail

The Friends of the Cresheim Trail
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