Washington Crossing State Park has changed in almost unimaginable ways over the last 100 years. From farm fields to gardens to plantations to old fields, shaped by deer, disease, and invasive species, the park represents a fluid and ever-changing landscape. Every aspect of the park has, whether directly or indirectly, been shaped by human-driven forces. Using Peter Osborne’s book, Where Washington Once Led, this talk aims to uncover some of these forces to reveal how the park has evolved, enabling participants to read the landscape through natural signs and artifacts.
Human landscapes cannot go “natural” on their own. We have the opportunity to restore this landscape, either along the lines of original designs such as with the George Washington Memorial Arboretum, which opened in 1932 and displayed native New Jersey shrubs and trees, or in the form of ecological restoration, aiming to return the human-dependent landscape back to nature. The talk will conclude with a discussion of the different options and the conservation work of the WCPA.
About the Presenter: Michael Rahtz is a board member of the Washington Crossing Park Association (WCPA) and the chair of the Nature Conservation and Education Committee. He has volunteered with the WCPA since 2017. He is a current Master of Landscape Architecture student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and recently graduated from Northeastern University with a Master of Architecture. He has worked at a number of architecture and landscape architecture firms in Boston. Michael grew up in Titusville across the street from Washington Crossing State Park and has been a lifelong user of the park. An avid gardener, plant enthusiast, and conservationist, Michael has spent several years restoring land on his home property as well as within the park. Michael is interested in ecology and landscape history, particularly as read through the lens of plants as living artifacts, and how these can inform land management practices.
This online event is in collaboration with the Pennington Library. Click here to register: https://www.penningtonlibrary.org/wcsplandscape/