LOVE Your Park Week typically starts out with a citywide clean up day followed by a week of diverse park events throughout the city. Due to the 13th being one of the rainiest days in May, many parks rescheduled their workdays. The workday for this year’s LOVE Your Park Week signature site, Fernhill Park in Germantown, was also rescheduled, but the rain delay didn’t put any kind of damper on the wonderful group of volunteers that pitched in on May 20th. Close to 150 volunteers from the community as well as our lead sponsor NovaCare came out for the workday. With guidance from Fairmount Park Conservancy, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation and Friends of Fernhill Park, these volunteers made a big difference for this beautiful city park.
With funding from the US Fish & Wildlife Service, a brand-new pollinator garden was installed. Native trees were planted, existing trees were cared for, benches were painted and repaired and litter and trash was cleaned up. In addition, 100 free trees were distributed by PECO through a partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation. Representatives from TreePhilly were on-site to help Philadelphia homeowners learn how to plant trees on their property. Rick Magder, Executive Director of Fairmount Park Conservancy was joined by Philadelphia Parks & Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell and State Representative Rosita Youngblood in acknowledging the commitment of Jessica Stanforth and the Friends of Fernhill Park and gave thanks to the great volunteers from our sponsor NovaCare that attended the workday.
The goal of the LOVE Your Park program has always been to preserve and enhance Philadelphia’s parks as essential urban resources for community gathering, recreation, and environmental protection and we were thrilled to have such a fruitful day at Fernhill Park. For the latest updates from the Friends of Fernhill Park, be sure to visit their Facebook page.
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See photos from our morning at Fernhill Park on Facebook.
