Tending Common Ground
Strategic Plan for 2025–2033
Within this 50-acre public park and National Historic Landmark, everyone is invited to be part of the long, layered, and still-growing story of Bartram’s Garden.
About the Strategic Plan
The new strategic plan is called Tending Common Ground because a public space like Bartram’s Garden thrives thanks to shared intention, care, and commitment. The Garden is a place for everyone––and there is much to do!
Tending Common Ground was created thanks to input from many visitors and stakeholders as well as from all members of the Garden’s staff and board and of the Southwest Philadelphia Community Leadership Team from 2024–2025.
The plan is also anchored in the Garden’s existing Campus Plan, which outlines upcoming major physical investments, including some that will come to fruition between 2025–2033.
Here’s what’s not included:
There are no new initiatives or major endeavors. Instead, this plan’s ambitions are even greater: to create lasting, systemic impacts and to welcome everyone into the stories and the joys of this extraordinary place.
Take a look and dig in. See you in the Garden soon!
Can you give me an example of the plan in action?
Yes! For example, one activity planned to respond to climate change is expanding Southwest Philadelphia’s tree canopy. Residents enjoy the seasonal impact of a shadier, cooler block while also benefitting from longer-term outcomes such as paid youth workforce development and a more diverse and resilient ecosystem.
How is the plan organized?
The plan is designed to distinguish between goals, objectives, and initiatives, each getting more specific and action-oriented:
- The three goals below state long-term outcomes.
- Each goal has three objectives or measurable components of progress.
- Initiatives are discrete action steps that advance objectives. Click the objectives below to see associated initiatives.
Because the plan is designed to cover 2025–2033, it doesn’t have many specifics about individual activities and programs. Instead, it serves as both a tether and a compass to help people feel grounded by a shared view of the future, re-directing energies or shifting decision-making based on new circumstances.
What are the goals?
What will happen? Who makes it possible? And how?
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Goal 1: Shared Joy, Shared Responsibility
sets the overarching priorities for what the Garden will do to strengthen personal bonds with nature, to take action for climate resilience, and to exchange multi-vocal stories about this land and the many beings—human and non-human alike—who have called it home.
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Goal 2: Values-Driven Human Ecosystem
calls for greater investment in the people who power Bartram’s Garden. For the site’s ethos of welcoming and care to be invigorating and sustainable, it must be accompanied by a culture of cross-pollination, systems that ease communications, and shifts in practices that lead to more holistic and impactful solutions.
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Goal 3: Abundance and Constraints in Harmony
outlines how to sustain sharpening the Garden’s position, setting priorities, and navigating uncertainty. The goal includes striking a balance between acknowledging finite financial resources as well as uncertainty in our wider world while also leaning into the abundance and shared values that the Garden enjoys and fosters with partners, neighbors, and supporters.
This plan is designed to distinguish between goals, objectives, and initiatives:
- Goals state long-term outcomes.
- Objectives are measurable components of progress towards a goal.
- Initiatives are discrete action steps that advance objectives. Click the objectives below to see associated initiatives.
This structure will guide tactical workplans and practices for assessment throughout the plan period.
Goal 1: Shared Joy, Shared Responsibility
What will happen?
Bartram’s Garden will strengthen the bond between people’s enjoyment of the site and their sense of shared responsibility to care for the land, river, and ecosystem, both now and for future generations.
Today’s caretakers must anticipate and respond to the implications of climate change, recognizing that safe, inviting access to nature is a key component of galvanizing future stewards. The Garden will continue its welcoming ethos, dismantling remaining barriers to engagement at the site. It will also work to ensure that these sensitive ecosystems are protected from the impacts of over-use, remaining verdant and safe to be enjoyed and cherished.
Objective: To strengthen the public’s bond to the vitality of the land, river, and ecosystem
- Encourage independent visitation, thoughtful engagement of all visitors, and people’s interests in growing, learning, and playing outdoors through enhanced welcoming, wayfinding, and communal
functions - Center the river and the watershed ecosystems as inviting spaces for learning, creating, and recreation through activation of FloatLab, the public dock, and expanded recreational trail
- Engage students, families, and teachers in hands-on educational experiences through a new Ecosystems Education Center and corresponding school-based and youth programming
Objective: To prioritize climate action in caretaking, land restoration, and community engagement
- Implement a comprehensive plan for capital improvements to facilities, trails, and public amenities, including appropriate facilities for necessary horticultural and maintenance functions
- Undertake watershed restoration, ecology, and sustainability projects guided by a long-range ecosystem and landscape resilience plan and informed by Traditional Ecological Knowledge and best practices for historic, urban landscapes
- Develop stronger practices for safety, land use, and risk management to offset increased visitation and the impacts of climate change
Objective: To ignite broader curiosity about the site and its histories through storytelling and learning
- Curate a cohesive story about the historic significance and contemporary relevance of the site, its peoples, and its place in Southwest Philadelphia
- Preserve, archive, interpret, and provide public access to the site’s landmark structures, artifacts, and historic and living collections
- Leverage the site’s assets to convene local, regional, and national collaborative learning communities
Goal 2: Values-Driven Human Ecosystem
Who makes it possible?
Bartram’s Garden will make a greater investment in the people who power the organization, attending to individuals as well as the dynamic and interconnecting human ecosystem. These commitments, including upskilling and professional development, will anticipate and prepare for the increased complexity required by new campus investments, increased visitation, and the impacts of known unknowns like climate change and neighborhood development.
Both within the staff and with volunteer stakeholders, teams will actively break down siloes and exchange resources to better inform joint planning, shared responsiveness, and collective decision-making. Engaging with partners and across hierarchies, these key shifts in practice call for a culture that encourages trust, openness, listening, and collaboration.
Objective: To deepen care and reciprocal accountability in the workplace culture
- Co-create intentional approaches to upskilling, professional development, and leadership pathways
- Enhance orientations, supervision, and mentorship to support staff and volunteers in feeling that their work is recognized, understood, and valued
- Balance the site’s seasonal intensity by embedding periods of restoration and reflection into workflow planning and partnership expectations
Objective: To establish systems that sustain quality as the Garden grows and becomes more complex
- Develop a methodical and routine process for evaluating initiatives to inform priority-setting and workplan refinements
- Use technologies to streamline cross-team processes and communications while furthering collaboration, synergy, and innovation
- Instill rigor into shared tools for tracking and fulfilling organizational priorities, outlining a multi-year timeline with milestones
Objective: To co-author decision-making policies and practices that increase trust, understanding, and effective collaboration
- Increase clarity and transparency around roles and responsibilities for making and communicating various decisions
- Advance communication between staff, board, and the Southwest Philadelphia Community Leadership Team to facilitate collegiality and greater clarity around when each group leads, collaborates, or augments the work of others
- Leverage institutional power and influence to advocate for neighborhood sovereignty and decision-making
Goal 3: Abundance & Constraints in Harmony
How?
After a period of meteoric growth, the Garden will listen more intently to the lessons of the natural world: all things in balance. An inherent appetite for abundance will be tempered by recognition of practical realities in order to create more sustainable plans for long-term excellence.
To navigate these paths with intentionality, the Garden holds fast to its values, prioritizing community-centered collaboration and deep listening to both ensure continued relevance and attract the financial resources for a multi-year plan with flexibility to expand or pivot as needed.
Objective: To ensure ongoing relevance to the people of Southwest Philadelphia
- Facilitate pathways that increase youth leadership, agency, and advocacy within the Garden as their backyard and within their communities
- Refine processes that collect and absorb input and feedback to tailor public programming to be responsive to nearby neighbors while also aligning offerings with capacity
- Identify priorities for building the Garden’s presence at community events and bringing activities and resources into neighborhoods
Objective: To center nearby residents within institutional collaborations
- Prioritize safe, inclusive access to nature, green space, and the riverfront as a key aspect of community health by collecting and sharing environmental data and issuing timely alerts
- Refine existing and new partnerships in ways that ensure structural and cultural alignment with core values and that center community priorities
- Amplify efforts that affirm neighborhood-based power and authority, especially in light of upcoming major development projects in Southwest Philadelphia and Gray’s Ferry
Objective: To generate and manage sufficient resources amid greater risk and opportunity
- Evolve and increase funding relationships that emphasize the Garden’s core values, equitable practices, and meaningful outcomes
- Shift from annual to multi-year financial projections supported by vigilant monitoring of available funds and other indicators for launching or pausing projects and initiatives
- Build a cohesive identity and brand to inform messaging that aligns with organizational intentions and that resonates with a variety of audiences, regionally and nationally
Tending Common Ground was affirmed and adopted by the John Bartram Association Board of Directors on June 12, 2025. The plan was created in 2024–2025 thanks to collaborative leadership and gracious input from all members of the Garden’s staff and board as well as the Southwest Philadelphia Community Leadership Team, deftly facilitated by Jennifer Shropshire of Shropshire Nonprofit Consulting.
For a full list of participants, see page 11 in Tending Common Ground.
You may also be interested in:
Our Plans & Partners
At a time of transformation along the Tidal Schuylkill River, new campus investments will provide world-class opportunities for learning, growing, and sharing.
Give Now
Your tax-deductible support keeps Bartram’s Garden growing and helps bring this plan to life.
Events & Activities
Join us for our upcoming workshops and events, featuring self-care, arts, gardening, kids’ activities, and more!
