Native Pollinator Garden is Here!

The entrance to the “B” park at 45th Street and Chester Avenue got a facelift last month when a team of Friends of Clark Park volunteers transformed 620 square feet filled with invasive species into a native plant habitat. The garden beds (designed by board member Erik Nash) offer a glimpse of our native prairie and edge habitat while giving a slight nod to the formal entrance that once was. The garden now features many different types of plants native to our region such as coneflower, horsemint, little bluestem, prairie dropseed, seersucker sedge, and foam flower (with milkweed and a few others coming soon). These plants will attract pollinating insects like bees and butterflies as well as provide habitat and nesting materials for birds and other animals. Our Garden Committee members and volunteers have been hard at work this spring beautifying every corner of the park. If you would like to help out, please email volunteer@friendsofclarkpark.org. We’re always looking for extra hands to help weed, prune, plant and mulch.

Native Pollinator Garden is Here!

The entrance to the “B” park at 45th Street and Chester Avenue got a facelift last month when a team of Friends of Clark Park volunteers transformed 620 square feet filled with invasive species into a native plant habitat. The garden beds (designed by board member Erik Nash) offer a glimpse of our native prairie and edge habitat while giving a slight nod to the formal entrance that once was. The garden now features many different types of plants native to our region such as coneflower, horsemint, little bluestem, prairie dropseed, seersucker sedge, and foam flower (with milkweed and a few others coming soon). These plants will attract pollinating insects like bees and butterflies as well as provide habitat and nesting materials for birds and other animals. Our Garden Committee members and volunteers have been hard at work this spring beautifying every corner of the park. If you would like to help out, please email volunteer@friendsofclarkpark.org. We’re always looking for extra hands to help weed, prune, plant and mulch.

Trash Clean Up in Clark Park

For many of us in the neighborhood, Clark Park has been even more important during the pandemic. The Friends of Clark Park has many goals for improving the park and one of them is trying to keep it clean. Obviously all the extra use during the normally more quiet winter has resulted in lots of extra trash at a time when our Clean and Green initiative is more or less on pause. We’ve always relied on volunteers to supplement trash services provided by the city and provided by FoCP fundraising. Often these cleanup days are initiated by the Friends, but that’s not always the case. In March, Thrive, a residential community in West Philly dedicated to civic engagement organized a clean up that they ran independently at a time of their choice. A part of  Thrive’s volunteer work is the West Philly Community Meet Up & Clean Up. The Meetup group has 74 members and to date since starting in August last year has had 9 events and collected 82 thirteen gallon bags in the local community. Friends of Clark Park is so grateful to be the beneficiary of this organization’s hard work. If you have an organization that would like to contribute to the beauty of Clark Park, feel free to reach out. The Friends can organize materials and tools necessary to run a clean up date. Or, just show up with your own masks, bags, and gloves, no planning required. The Friends and the community at large is always grateful for any volunteer efforts. If showing up the a more formal event is more your speed, consider the clean up for Clark Park on May 8th as part of the larger Love Your Park week initiative.