James G. Kaskey Memorial Garden

Hidden gem! I discovered this place when trying to take a short cut in an emergency. It didn’t turn out to be a short cut, and everything worked out ok. However the mistake led me through this amazing space!

Such a lovely place in the middle of the city. It’s literally surrounded by Penns campus. There’s a pond with koi and turtles who love to be fed. There’s benches in the shade to sit. It’s a great place to eat lunch if you’re in the area. We come here in all seasons. Each season is different but still beautiful.

Also called the Biopond. It is a natural ecosystem with turtles fish and sometimes ducks. It’s also on Hamilton Walk not Locust Walk.

This little park, which looks a lot larger than it is once you’re in it, is a hidden gem in an urban area with mostly paved survaces and tall buildings. A pond surrounded by a forest-​like area, a mixture of carefully tended and somewhat wild areas, this place is beautiful and serene at all times of the day and night.
This park also offers a remarkable birdwatching opportunity, in spring migration, two years now I have observed this. During the first two years in may, this park fills up with ovenbirds (
), a migrating warbler that dwells on the forest floor. The ovenbird is a camouflaged bird that normally inhabits only mature forests. But for some reason, they love this park, and the park is chock full of them. I once counted 8 of them at once. This is a species that is often heard, but can be hard to see even one of. This park represents a unique opportunity to see this normally elusive species.

I can’t believe I’ve only just discovered this place. I’ve been living in U City for months now, drinking here for years, and never have I even heard of it. It’s beautiful, with flowing water, abundant shade, and seemingly random design. This is where I’ll do a lot of my sitting in the months to come.

The five stars are for me. On one of the worst days of my life, I needed to go somewhere, very very much. And this was, in my mind, the first and only place to go. Botanical tranquilizer.
On other, happier days, I took a camera, and snapped several pics of the flora, posted them to facebook, and asked everyone to guess where they were taken. No one got it right, because almost no one outside of the Penn community knows about this place.

Ahhh the biopond. Technically part of UPenn’s Department of Biology, the biopond is a research garden /​venerable natural oasis, located behind the quad on UPenn’s campus.
Benches and picnic tables dot the space — some with built-​in chess boards, or other fanciful designs. When I was in college, the biopond was THE spot to chill between classes, particularly if we wanted to be shady, and drink some boxed wine (hey, we were poor and desperate.)
We used to have scavenger hunts in the biopond area, which is full of little foot paths and clearings, and once, we had a bike gang war here (umm, a pretend bike gang war) and pushed one of our friends in the biopond. Totally gnarly!
I’ve also heard, through the grapevine, that the back field serves as a sweet spot for rambunctious college students looking to indulge in a little green (if you know what I mean) — particularly during a certain day in April. Avoid the BP on this day — the masses ruin the serene vibe.