LOVE Your Park Week: 5 Ways to Get the Most Out of It

• Practise Something

  Start Your Own Friends of Park Group

The Denizen Recommends: Park Beloved

The Denizen Recommends: Park Dear

LOVE Your Park Week starts Saturday with a citywide cleanup—and continues with park-celebrating events all calendar week

May. 05, 2016

How do you beloved your park? Do you jog its perimeter? Run your dog? Swing your kids? Sunbathe on the lawn? Any your relationship to your neighborhood park, this weekend is your chance to evidence it some dear.

On Sabbatum morning, ii,000 devoted volunteers across the city volition caput out to their favorite local patch of green to pick upwardly trash, paint faded fixtures, mulch copse and more to make ready their park for the fifth annual Dear Your Park Calendar week (LYPW).

Fairmount Park Conservancy (FPC) and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation's eight-day hoopla encourages folks to celebrate the city's local parks through a serial of events taking place across the city. The reason is unproblematic: The more people are involved, the better our parks are, says FPC Stewardship Coordinator Lindsey Walker. "When communities and neighbors are engaged, the parks tend to be in ameliorate shape," because active citizens, for example, organize cleanup days, host park events and even abet for amend maintenance by reaching out to Metropolis Quango.

Through the stewardship program, Walker works to encourage the formation of and oversee Park Friends Groups made up of volunteers who piece of work to keep their parks looking spiffy throughout the year. LOVE Your Park Calendar week, she says, has made her job a little easier. "We started Honey Your Park Week with 80 friends groups," she says. "Now nosotros have 115."

There are lots of reasons to Love Your Park likewise the obvious break from all that concrete. Adding greenery to a dull, vacant lot in a neighborhood has been shown to reduce offense rates. A Penn study of low-income areas in Philadelphia showed that planting trees in a neighborhood boosted nearby home sales by two percent. And then in that location's the consequence on our well-being. BioMed Primal Public Health data shows that walking or running in green spaces has a positive effect on anxiety, acrimony, fatigue and sadness.

Whatever your reason for loving your park, there are tons of means you tin get involved this week. Here are some LYPW highlights if y'all …

Want to Become Fifty-fifty More Involved

The mere fact that you're showing up to a LYPW event is a step in the correct direction, but if you're inspired to make more of a lasting impact, consider striking up one of the more civic-minded gatherings. Parks and Rec's Citizens Participating in Inquiry & Restoration program is leading a Forest Restoration and Constitute ID Hike on May 15th, where you can larn how to get involved with local forest preservation techniques. An interactive Water Department event on May seventh delves into ways the urban center is working to keep our drinking h2o make clean. Show up to the Let'south Move Outside! Volunteer Off-white on May 10th to meet with local groups, like Permit's Move Exterior and Philadelphia Freedom Valley YMCA, offering outdoor service opportunities all twelvemonth long.

Want to Become Your Hands Dirty

Of grade none of this fun would happen if we didn't have parks, so consider donating some elbow grease at ane of several service days scheduled throughout the week. Bank check this link to sign upward and browse opportunities affording y'all a hazard practise everything from painting to planting to mowing in parks y'all may not have heard of. The mother of all service days takes identify on May 7th in Northeast Philly's Pleasant Hill Park. Mayor Jim Kenney and LYPW organizers volition be there to found vii new trees along the park'south fishing pier, and exercise some spiffing up around the fish hatchery, wetlands, playground and river walk. More on that event here.

Photo Header: Flickr/Kevin Burkett

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/love-your-park-week/