By Julia Lowe and Gabriel Donahue
Nature lovers, mark your calendars for Love Your Park Week 2026.
One hundred forty park friends groups care for the city’s parks year-round and are calling for volunteers to join the cleanup and beautification days hosted from May 9-17.
“I think it’s a great way to be outside with the community,” says Catherine Lowther, president of Friends of Penn Treaty Park. “It doesn’t have to be our park … There’s so many to choose from.”
Love Your Park Week has been a staple, biannual event in the Philadelphia parks scene since its launch in 2012 by the FPC and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation.
Grid caught up with a few friends groups to find out how they’ll be celebrating their parks and how volunteers can join in on stewardship efforts at a park near them.
Find more details at loveyourpark.org.
FDR Park
South Philadelphia
Folks who want to show their love for South Philadelphia’s largest park can join the Friends of FDR Park for their May 9 volunteer day from 10 a.m. to noon.
Across the park’s 348 acres, there’s a lot to love. On a typical Saturday volunteer day, options range from trash removal to removing weeds and invasive plants. With its aquatic wetland environment, volunteers often wade or kayak out into the park’s lakes to continue trash removal.
The focus of the Love Your Park volunteering day, however, will be on the park’s educational spaces.
“Our focus this year is going to be on our learning garden, which houses our partner plots, our cultural demonstration gardens, seed production gardens, flower gardens,” says Tara Anastasi, volunteer coordinator for Friends of FDR Park. “We’re going to be prioritizing our newly established food forest,” she adds, “which is going to get planted on Earth Day. So Love Your Park volunteers will be continuing to maintain that space.”
The park’s pollinator garden will also be a priority site for the volunteer day. But folks will also have the option to simply wander the park and pick up trash. It’s the impact of regular volunteers partnering with park staff to maintain these green spaces that has transformed the park over the last few years, Anastasi says.
“Since I’ve been here, our team has made it cleaner, picked up trash, made sure trash cans are clean, started weeding things. You can see the lakes now.”
For those who want to start a family tradition of park stewardship early, Friends of FDR Park will also host a toddler stewardship day on May 13, where children ages 3 to 5 can love their park from 10 to 11 a.m. at the park’s learning garden.
“They get to plant seeds, they get to move mulch, they definitely get to learn how to use the trash picker, dig holes, find bugs,” Anastasi says.
Penn Treaty Park
Fishtown
Penn Treaty Park’s Love Your Park volunteering event will focus on the pollinator garden at the park’s southeast corner. The space has been undergoing reactivation by the Friends of Park Treaty, who have slowly replaced the formerly underutilized grassy field with a collection of pollinator-friendly plants.
A usual volunteering day at Penn Treaty Park is “choose your own adventure,” says Catherine Lowther, president of Friends of Penn Treaty Park, with tasks like trash collection and regular garden maintenance always needing hands. But on May 16, from 10:00 a.m. to noon, volunteers will also care for tree pits and expand the pollinator garden, replacing a remaining stretch of grass with native perennial plants.
The pollinator garden is just one space at Penn Treaty that has transformed thanks to ideas from community members and volunteers who are willing to get their hands dirty, Lowther says. Last year, the group also installed an orchard, and is working toward accreditation as an arboretum — two ideas that both came from volunteers.
“In one year, we planted 80 trees. That’s crazy! What an amazing gift to give to Philadelphia and for the future Philadelphia, to my daughter, who’s now seven. We started this when she was one,” Lowther says. “She comes out to these volunteer days and learns the value of service, the value of keeping an urban area clean.”
Lowther does not understate the impact of events like Love Your Park, when Penn Treaty averages roughly double the number of volunteers for a usual volunteer day.
“To think about that happening across the city on a given day, a given week, is really beautiful, and speaks to how much the Philadelphia community really does value access to green spaces and prioritizes them.”
Tacony Creek Park
North Philadelphia
At Tacony Creek Park, volunteers are invited to join this year’s Love Your Park cleanup and tree planting event, “Trash Out, Trees In,” on May 9 from 9 a.m. to noon. Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership’s director of community organizing and public programs, Cesali Morales, says there are multiple volunteer opportunities in the coming weeks, including April 11’s Philly Spring Cleanup, which will help prepare for a later event at the park.
“We’re trying to hit a lot of the major sites throughout the park throughout April and May,” she says, referring to multiple volunteer opportunities in the coming weeks.
Trash Out, Trees In will focus on the Adams Avenue Bridge on the north side of the park. It’s the same location as last year’s historic 4,000-tire dump and subsequent cleanup, which saw nearly 200 volunteers come together to pull the tires out of the creek individually, without the use of machinery, Morales says.
“We usually try to meet the need for the site that obviously needs a lot of support at that moment, and then we turn our focus towards that,” she says, referring to determining cleanup programming.
While the park currently has a grounds crew that works five days a week, Morales says the effort to keep the 30-square-mile park clean cannot be done without volunteers.
“We need as many hands as we can get. This is years and years of dumping that we’re trying to clear out. It doesn’t happen overnight, it doesn’t get cleaned up overnight,” she says. “In order to make a transformation, we need a lot of people to help us make that happen. We’re a small team right now.”
And, she says, there are plenty of benefits to joining, in addition to a clean park unburdened by litter where neighbors can gather and spend time.
“You end up knowing someone new, you end up feeling good because you can see the actual work that you put in and how much change actually happens,” Morales says. And to anyone unsure of volunteering for the first time, “I would say just go for it. I mean, you might end up coming back. You might end up inviting someone on a hike there later on. It’s a beautiful morning. It’s a simple thing, a beautiful morning.”
Hunting Park
North Philadelphia
Also in North Philly is Hunting Park, which will be the site of a cleanup and beautification day on May 9. This will include litter pickup and light landscaping, according to an email from Leroy Fisher, president of Hunting Park United Association.
Fisher said the group, which first came together in 2008 and is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has included Love Your Park events in its stewardship programming for many years. With 87 acres, Hunting Park is one of the largest green spaces in North Philadelphia.
“Love Your Park Week is valuable because it brings people together around a shared goal — taking care of the public spaces that belong to everyone,” he said. “Parks are essential for recreation, health, and community connection. When residents come together to clean and care for their parks, it builds pride in the neighborhood and helps ensure these spaces remain welcoming and safe for families.”
All volunteers are welcome, regardless of experience, and members of Hunting Park United will be available on-site to certify community service hours. The cleanup will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“We provide the tools, the supplies, and the guidance,” Fisher said. “Whether someone stays for an hour or the whole event, their participation makes a real difference. It’s also a great way to meet neighbors and be part of something positive in the community.”
For those who want to get involved outside of Love Your Park week, Hunting Park United hosts regular cleanups and youth activities, including an annual Family Fun and Fitness Day.
