The weather held out for us on Saturday as we honored National Public Lands Day and cleaned up the trails and the original Rose Tree Park stage at Glen Providence Park. It was a productive four hours, with 14 volunteers bringing in 5 large bags of trash, 5 bags of invasive plants, and two large pipes. Some new faces and some familiar faces came together to make a visible difference.

Stephanie got us started with an introduction and distribution of her custom historic map of the park. There is a lot of rich history here, as our regular facebook and blog readers are aware. As we dispersed for cleanup, many worked the trails, and another group focused on the original Rose Tree Park stage, which is located midway down the main hill on the north side. For a while I thought it was an old volleyball or paddle tennis court. But no, this is where concerts were held from the 1930’s until the completion of the amphitheater at the new Rose Tree Park in 1975.

This unused stage had trash, fallen branches and invasive weeds that were threatening to swallow the entire structure. Our work revealed hidden stairs, beautiful stonework, an actual concrete stage under the dirt, numerous wonderful native plants and a mature azalea hedge.

Next steps will be to continue removal of invasives, plant some decorative native plants, and hopefully revive some special events on the stage!

On October 15 we will have another volunteer event at the park, and we are hoping to do some plantings at that time, on the stage and by the pond and stream where some erosion has occurred.

Have a look at the day’s work: