Mandy Katz
Botanical Field Guide
2017
Working in multiple disciplines, through intuitive processes and multi-sensory observations of nature’s patterns, Mandy Katz creates worlds in the forms of gardens, songs, and visual art. These worlds are intended to cultivate a reverent, questioning, grieving relationship with the divine spark of life.
The tool created is a field guide to the plants of the Lower Schuylkill. The guide points out practical and ecological services offered by plants of the region with simple illustrations and provide names of each plant included in the guide. The plant list was created by using botanical surveys of the area near Bartram’s Garden conducted by members of the Botanical Club of Philadelphia throughout the 2017 growing season. We organized the first botanizing trip to take place in April. Printed on laminated card stock it will be made available at the boathouse and visitor’s center at Bartram’s Garden. It can also be used as a decorative wall hanging.
The Field Guide to the Plants of the Lower Schuylkill is a site specifc tool useful to a wide variety of people. The guide will be a tool for developers to recognize what is rare and should be protected, for joggers, bikers, and boaters to awaken to the diversity and inter relatedness of life in urban places, and as a point of reference for scientists and historians of the present and future. It will be a tool for local residents to learn plant names and about why plants matter. For all, it will make clearly visible a whole ecological community we are a key part of.
