NewsPronto

 
The Times


.

USA Conversation

The Conversation USA

The Conversation USA

The hidden history of Philadelphia’s window-box gardens and their role in urban reform

  • Written by Sonja Dümpelmann, Professor of Environmental Humanities, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
imageWindow-box gardening has been a Philly tradition since the 1800s.Sonja Dümpelmann, CC BY-SA

It’s that time of year when Philadelphia row home owners with a green thumb fastidiously attend to their window boxes – selecting new plants to design an artful blend of colors, shapes and textures.

Sonja Dümpelmann is a historian of...

Read more: The hidden history of Philadelphia’s window-box gardens and their role in urban reform

More Articles ...

  1. Is China the new cool? How Beijing is using pop culture to win the soft power war
  2. From Doing Business to B-READY: World Bank’s new rankings represent a rebrand, not a revamp
  3. Justice Department lawyers work for justice and the Constitution – not the White House
  4. Trump is stripping protections from marine protected areas – why that’s a problem for fishing’s future, and for whales, corals and other ocean life
  5. US universities lose millions of dollars chasing patents, research shows
  6. From help to harm: How the government is quietly repurposing everyone’s data for surveillance
  7. Trump administration pauses new mine safety regulation − here’s how those rules benefit companies as well as workers
  8. Controlled burns reduce wildfire risk, but they require trained staff and funding − this could be a rough year
  9. Stripping federal protection for clean water harms just about everyone, especially already vulnerable communities
  10. I study local government and Hurricane Helene forced me from my home − here’s how rural towns and counties in North Carolina and beyond cooperate to rebuild
  11. A warning for Democrats from the Gilded Age and the 1896 election
  12. Habeas corpus: A thousand-year-old legal principle for defending rights that’s getting a workout under the Trump administration
  13. Reducing diversity, equity and inclusion to a catchphrase undermines its true purpose
  14. Perfect brownies baked at high altitude are possible thanks to Colorado’s home economics pioneer Inga Allison
  15. Some politicians who share harmful information are rewarded with more clicks, study finds
  16. Make Russia Medieval Again! How Putin is seeking to remold society, with a little help from Ivan the Terrible
  17. Francis, a pope of many firsts: 5 essential reads
  18. Lawful permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil have a right to freedom of speech – but does that protect them from deportation?
  19. Federal laws don’t ban rollbacks of environmental protection, but they don’t make it easy
  20. Why don’t humans have hair all over their bodies? A biologist explains our lack of fur
  21. Endowments aren’t blank checks – but universities can rely on them more heavily in turbulent times
  22. Exposure to perceptible temperature rise increases concern about climate change, higher education adds to understanding
  23. What will happen at the funeral of Pope Francis
  24. How the next pope will be elected – what goes on at the conclave
  25. Scientists found a potential sign of life on a distant planet – an astronomer explains why many are still skeptical
  26. ‘I never issued a criminal contempt citation in 19 ½ years on the bench’ – a former federal judge looks at the ‘relentless bad behavior’ of the Trump administration in court
  27. As views on spanking shift worldwide, most US adults support it, and 19 states allow physical punishment in schools
  28. Crime is nonpartisan and the blame game on crime in cities is wrong – on both sides
  29. With federal funding in question, artists can navigate a perilous future by looking to the past
  30. Lawsuits seeking to address climate change have promise but face uncertain future
  31. All models are wrong − a computational modeling expert explains how engineers make them useful
  32. Trump’s attacks on central bank threaten its independence − and that isn’t good news for sound economic stewardship (or battling inflation)
  33. Claims of ‘anti-Christian bias’ sound to some voters like a message about race, not just religion
  34. How does your brain create new memories? Neuroscientists discover ‘rules’ for how neurons encode new information
  35. Patriots’ Day: How far-right groups hijack history and patriotic symbols to advance their cause, according to an expert on extremism
  36. International students infuse tens of millions of dollars into local economies across the US. What happens if they stay home?
  37. Popular AIs head-to-head: OpenAI beats DeepSeek on sentence-level reasoning
  38. Why people with autism struggle to get hired − and how businesses can help by changing how they look at job interviews
  39. Appliance efficiency standards save consumers billions, reduce pollution and fight climate change
  40. Why deregulating online platforms is actually bad for free speech
  41. Ethical leadership can boost well-being and performance in remote work environments
  42. Is a ‘friend-apist’ what we really want from therapy?
  43. Federal judge finds ‘probable cause’ to hold Trump administration in contempt – a legal scholar explains what this means
  44. How single-stream recycling works − your choices can make it better
  45. The sudden dismissal of public records staff at health agencies threatens government accountability
  46. Wide variety of old-growth ecosystems across the US makes their conservation a complex challenge
  47. Railways were essential to carrying out the Holocaust – decades later, corporate reckoning continues
  48. 200 years ago, France extorted Haiti in one of history’s greatest heists – and Haitians want reparations
  49. Cory Booker’s long speech offers a strategy for Trump opponents in a fragmented media landscape
  50. Miami researchers are testing a textured seawall designed to hold back water and create a home for marine organisms