By Alex Lopez It was a pleasure working with the Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens together with the National Park Service! Although my stay was only for the duration for the summer, I got to meet many people from unique backgrounds and talents. I spoke with interns from NPS who were relatively around my age...
By Shannah Cumberbatch Hello Friends, All good things must come to an end… I began my journey with the Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens (FoKAG) in January 2021. These years certainly flew by! Here we are with over 1,200 days to look back on. It took me weeks to draft this because I had no...
Our elders know the secrets, have the stories and hold the keys to what our communities used to look like and how they functioned. Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens wants to know from our senior and seasoned residents what your experience of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens has been over the last eight decades. If...
By Joe Lapp I want to tell you about one of my personal national park heroes, Walter McDowney. Walter grew up in Kenilworth Courts, the public housing complex just outside the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. When his family moved in around 1960, they thought their new home a palace. Walter loved nature and spent lots of...
By Joe Lapp “The lily ponds,” as I called the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens while growing up on nearby Douglas Street, makes me happy! Why? Well, for starters, did you know that a one-armed Civil War veteran started the digging that made the ponds? That’s right, Walter “W. B.” Shaw lost his right arm at the...
By Shannah Cumberbatch Our very own Shannah Cumberbatch was invited to speak on a panel at the Women’s Environmental Leadership Summit alongside other professionals in the field! This is the first time the summit was held in person since 2019. The Anacostia Community Museum’s Center for Environmental Justice organizes this summit to “engage a multigenerational...
By Joe Lapp Thanks to Helen Fowler’s advocacy and constant care from the National Park Service, the ponds that make up the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens have remained relatively untouched for the last century. But the adjacent neighborhood has seen radical change. Check out these two photos: The 1926 print above shows residents of the Kenilworth...
By Shannah Cumberbatch The Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens are known for their variety of pink lotus and water lilies. However, if you’ve visited in recent months then you may have seen something else pink. This park is the site of the first ever bioblitz held in 1996. What’s a bioblitz you ask? It’s a survey of...
By Shannah Cumberbatch In July, I was invited to meet with the Environmental Justice Academy of the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum on two separate occasions.At the start of the second week of the program, I greeted the academy students at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens where we engaged in hands-on activities. The group was split in...
By Shannah Cumberbatch In June, FoKAG welcomed our Junior Ranger Adventure Squad back to the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens for another week-long outdoor camp led by Urban Adventure Squad (UAS). We engaged 21 school-aged kids from Wards 7 & 8 in activities that ranged from birding to pond-dipping to geology and rock formation. During the pond-dipping...
