News and Events
The recent award of $225,000 from the state met the October 31 deadline and puts the purchase of 5407 Wissahickon Avenue within reach. With more than $40,000 in matching funds from the community to date, we are very close to reaching the full purchase price of $277,000. Our community fundraising continues! Donate online or by mail.
Through the Greenways, Trails and Recreation Program, the PA Department of Community and Economic Development has awarded our partner, Natural Lands Trust, a grant of $225,000 in support of the purchase of the site at 5407 Wissahickon Avenue.
This award, along with the tremendous generosity of the community, which to date has committed more than $40,000 in outright gifts and pledges, puts the purchase and preservation of the site of the Old Tennis Court Farm within reach!
You can help close the gap of $12,000 to meet the full purchase price of $277,000:
For more about the state award, see the press release from the office of Rep. Rosita Youngblood, who championed our cause.
Join us on November 12, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. as we prepare Cloverly for its winter sleep and spring bloom. Our main tasks will be weeding and mulching the “Pathway Garden” off the School House Lane entrance, weeding around our young trees, and clearing out litter and debris.
To sign up, go to our contact page or register at Love Your Park.
When Chestnut Hill Local writer Stacia Friedman interviewed us about our efforts to acquire and preserve the Old Tennis Court Farm, she was struck by the way that the garden drew members of a very diverse community.
Over the years it was in operation, we met not only immediate neighbors from the West Chelten and Queen Lane neighborhoods in Germantown and East Falls, but gardeners from East Germantown and Mt. Airy, even Center City and South Philadelphia.
We were different colors and different ages. We had different levels of incomes. Different genders. Different orientations. Some of us wished our jobs didn’t consume so much of our time and energy. Others wished they had a job to go to. We went to different churches—or maybe no church at all. We had different ideas about the world, and vastly different experiences had formed us.
But we had, as it turned out, common ground.
Whether we knew a lot about gardening or were new to dirt, trowels, and weeds, whether we needed to put food on our own tables or hoped to put food on the tables of others, we all wanted to grow that food.
And over each season, as we nurtured our seedlings, prayed for rain, cursed the weeds, and harvested our carrots, kale, zucchini, and beets, we began to find the similarities behind the identity labels that tell such an incomplete story: Our concerns for our aging and ailing parents. Our deep love for our spouses and partners, children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, siblings and friends. Our hopes for this city that is long on potential and always seems just another reach away from meeting it.
We found that you can grow community in a garden.
See Stacia Friedman’s article at http://www.chestnuthilllocal.com/2016/08/04/green-germantown-neighbors-rally-save-urban-farm/
See also our article in the East Falls Local: http://www.eastfallslocal.com/northwest-residents-hope-to-preserve-community-garden/
Help purchase and preserve this vital community resource. Donate online or mail a check.
As visitors to this site can no doubt tell, the big news from the Friends of Cloverly Park is the Old Tennis Court Farm Protection Project. This is new territory for us. We have never undertaken any fundraising of this magnitude. But this is an extraordinary situation: Germantown Friends School has offered the community the opportunity to purchase and preserve forever a 0.65-acre parcel of land adjacent to the park.
If Cloverly’s neighbors and friends can raise sufficient funds to effect the purchase, we can bring back the Old Tennis Court Farm, the thriving community garden that operated on the site from 2009 to 2015.
Once again, the neighborhood would have a place for community members to raise fresh, organic fruits and vegetables for their own tables, their friends and families’ tables, and those of the community’s food-security programs.
The purchase price of the parcel is $277,000. We are working with Natural Lands Trust, which is seeking public funds for a portion of the cost. We have set a goal of raising least $75,000 from the community. Each gift, whether $5 or $500, will be important because it will have come from you, the community.
We have just begun getting the word out about the project, and we hope you will help us in doing so. And if you have ideas or suggestions for fundraising, please contact us.
This is the launch of our Friends of Cloverly Park website. We hope you will check it frequently for updates on park issues and events.
We are fortunate in the many organizations that choose to volunteer with us, among them the middle school students and teachers of nearby Fitler Academics Plus at Seymour and Knox Streets, who have been joining us for the spring Love Your Park since 2014; the community service programs of Penn Charter and Germantown Friends schools; and the men of the Drexel chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha, who have given us more than a thousand volunteer hours since 2005.
But among our most important volunteers are our silent friends, those helpful neighbors and park users who, all year round, pick up trash and debris in and around the park without being asked or expecting recognition. A good neighborhood park is an asset to the whole community, and the quiet and constant actions of these neighbors speak of their commitment to keeping Cloverly a beautiful, safe space for all to enjoy. Thank you!
© Friends of Cloverly Park. All rights reserved.
Cloverly Park photos © Kathleen Wert
