A newspaper co-worker once told me that his dad, a lifelong Manhattan resident, was astonished on his first trip to Minnesota. “It’s so clean here,” he said.
Yes, it is, thanks to volunteers . I get a fuzzy feeling every time I see bags of trash awaiting pick-up along Minnesota’s highways. Nearly every mile, big blue and white roadside signs proclaim the names of families or groups who walk the shoulders and ditches picking up every scrap.
Signage is more subtle in Roseville, but volunteers who tidy the city’s 60 parks are highly valuable to the Park and Recreation Department.
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“Their work is worth a million dollars to the city,” said Lonnie Brokke, department director.
Though I sit on the Friends of Roseville Parks board, the concept of Adopt a Park didn’t click with me until Brokke drove a vanload of us board members on a tour of the city’s parks last month. That’s when I spotted a modest sign indicating that a local bank had adopted Langton Lake Park.
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“Tell us more about that,” I suggested. Brokke said that nearly every park has “angels” who pick up trash and branches, plant flowers and keep an eye on these public treasures, many of them bordering lakes or ponds (Roseville is a very watery place). The groups might be businesses or civic groups, sometimes even Boy Scouts, National Honor Society members or students looking for projects.
This is no recent phenomenon tied to the “green” movement. Groups such as the B-Dale Club have been at it for decades. Their clubhouse backs up to Villa Park tucked southeast of Dale Street and County Road B, and years ago they built a softball field there, which they later donated to the city.
About two dozen members of that social/civic club patrol the park, in the springtime, to gather fallen branches, and throughout the year to check for refuse.
“You could drive up and down County Road B and never notice Villa Park, but a lot of people walk there," said Kevin Turnquist, B-Dale treasurer and past president. By keeping their backyard park neat, B-Dale members not only form a sense of camaraderie but also realize that a little effort on their part is a big help to Roseville.
“It would cost a lot to send city crews to do what we do,” Turnquist said.
Tom and Virginia Turba live right across the street from Lexington Park, at Lexington Avenue and County Road B, one of Roseville’s most visible and well-used rec areas.
“It’s sort of like my front yard,” Tom says. He and Virginia and a flock of neighbors tidy the park weekly. “For me, it used to be daily before I had a stroke,” he said. Members of Boy Scout troop 297 tied to Roseville Lutheran Church make it their project, too. They all have been tending that corner even before it officially became a city park, planting flowers, keeping an eye on activity there. A hockey rink and a playground full of enticing equipment attract throngs.
“What we really need is something for the in-between agers, not little kids on the slides or teenagers using the ice rink.” Turba thinks a climbing installation would be ideal.
“Not only our Friends of Lexington Area Park group, but all people who use the park become protective of it and try to keep it looking good,” Turba said.
If you and your friends or co-workers would like a little bending exercise picking up branches, planting flowers or pulling weeds, Brokke says there are some parks waiting to be adopted. Call 651-792-7110 to volunteer.
The thing about trash is that you don’t notice when it’s not there. And the reason, in Roseville, that it’s not there is because people care enough about our parks to make them pristine.
