Celebrating New Green Space on National Trails Day

Northwood Students and Community Build New Green Space
On Saturday, June 5, 2010, National Trails Day, the Northwood Chesapeake Bay Trail project sponsors, Chesapeake Bay Trust (CBT), Northwood High School (NHS), Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC), Friends of Sligo Creek (FOSC), Neighbors of Northwest Branch (NNWB), and MD State Highway Administration (SHA), will celebrate the land restoration project completion with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a 5k Bay Fun Run and Hike. The celebration and 5k will start at 10:00 am until 12:00 pm at Kaplan Stadium behind Northwood High School, 919 University Blvd. West, Silver Spring. Leaders from each partnering organization will officially open the new green space and the new, nature interpretive Northwood Chesapeake Bay Trail at 10:00 am. The 5k run will follow at 10:20 am and at 11:00 am, walkers will hike the new trail that connects the school to Northwest Branch Park. The Georgetown North Face store and Silver Spring Pacer’s store will provide merchandise and gift certificates as door prizes for hikers and runners. In addition, the celebration will have health and environmental education resource and activity tables.
American Hiking Society’s National Trails Day is the opportune time to celebrate the completion of an eight month project to restore fifteen acres of SHA property adjacent to Northwood High School and the Kemp Mill and Northwood Four Corners’ neighborhoods and give these communities new green space for recreation, physical fitness, wilderness watching, and environmental education. More than fifty years ago, the state purchased this land to potentially build a road on it. A road was not built and instead it became an unofficial, community landfill. With the help of a $7,500 grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust, 272 community members, 227 of them students, have volunteered 675 hours to create and design eight nature interpretive signs, build a half mile trail, remove 50 pounds of invasive plant species, grow 300 native plant seeds, plant 160 native meadow plants and nine trees, and clean-up 11,000 pounds of trash. After eight months of dedicating hundreds of hours of work by many volunteers, it is time to celebrate the community’s success in creating a new dual ecosystem park, deciduous forest and meadow. Please join the community, project’s organizational leaders, and elected representatives in celebrating its success of creating a new green space in Silver Spring.

Trail Completed

The trail is finished and looking beautiful. One hundred and sixty native plants have been planted in the meadow and nine native trees have been planted in the woods. Everything is growing great and nature interpretive signs should be added to the trail soon. In addition, an educational kiosk will be built by the vernal pool. We'd like to thank everyone for their help and participation. Everyone is welcome to come to our trail opening celebration on June 5th. We hope to see you there!
Tom, 2011