Field Notes

The botanical season is in full swing and Devon and I have had several successful field surveys documenting the early-season plant communities at Library Field. It's been a joy to watch this landscape waking up, all its dormant life emerging and flourishing across the once-bare hillsides. Our species list is...

In order to expand our network, knowledge, and stewardship capabilities at the Library Field, the Metropolitan New York Library Council has joined the Lower Hudson PRISM. From their site: "The Lower Hudson Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management (LH PRISM) is a collaboration of environmental organizations, engaged community members and...

We commenced work this month on the Flora of the Library Field Project, an effort to document the various species of native and introduced plants that make up the living environment at METRO’s Library Field. I'll start off with a few words on our methodology, beginning with a question that...

The Flora of the Library Field is an ongoing project to document the species of native and introduced plants that make up the living environment at METRO's Library Field. Beginning in March 2026, Mark Horton-Sacha and Devon Cummings will conduct a comprehensive survey to identify and catalog the naturally occurring...

We’ve already begun to activate the Library Field as a site of knowledge creation through our fall hikes and spring stewardship workshops, and we’re eager to add some more formal programming  — events that likewise take advantage of our wooded setting — in Spring and Summer 2026.  While the “stump...

From July through November of 2025 we led participants from METRO member institutions on a 15-stop, 2 hour hike at the Library Field as part of our ongoing participatory design process. This report is a review of the input we received, and it offers some insight into what our next...