Trust for Public Land

Everyone deserves a safe outdoor space where they can rest, rejuvenate, and have fun. For students of West Side High in Newark, NJ, finding that space wasn’t always easy. This project built a working garden run by students to give them an outdoor space to call their own and connect with each other.

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We are dedicated to removing barriers and restrictions that keep people from the outdoor time they deserve. There’s a literal wall keeping Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood residents from accessing a publicly owned section of riverfront land – but not for long. This project creates easier access to this natural area.

Even a small amount of time outside every day can make us happier and less stressed. To ensure residents of Lakeview Terrace, one of the oldest public housing complexes in the United States, could experience the everyday benefits of being outdoors, the project renovated existing basketball courts, planted trees, and added outdoor art installations celebrating the community’s rich history and culture.

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We know the time we spend outside together makes a difference. So, this project gave Chicagoans on the West Side eighteen new reasons to spend time outside with friends and family. Thanks to a newly renovated miniature golf course in Douglass Park, everyone in the community has access to fresh air, great fun, and unique outdoor moments that help us connect to each other – and nature.

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Shared outdoor spaces bring communities together. This project helped increase access to green space for residents by creating the Huntington Community Forest. This 245-acre forest gives the community a nearby outdoor space people of all abilities can have access to every day. Plus, it’s adjacent to the Brewster Pierce Memorial School – giving students an outdoor classroom and new learning opportunities to explore.

We were surprised to learn that despite the Delaware River running alongside their town, 75,000 residents in Sullivan County, NY, didn’t have sufficient access to the outdoors. This project created the Callicoon Riverside Park. This public park is directly on the river, providing residents and visitors with waterside walking trails, outdoor play areas for kids, and free public access to the water.

Along with getting people access to the outdoors, we also help restore and refresh outdoor spaces that are not serving the community in the way they were intended. This project took an ignored, underutilized park, and turned it into the ultimate space, including a new playground designed by the neighborhood youth, where the entire community can play, relax, and connect.

Chiloquin is the ancestral homeland of the indigenous Klamath Tribes. Unfortunately, the county Chiloquin is in ranked among the lowest in the state for overall health outcomes. Driven by our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, this project created a beautiful green schoolyard and 8.5 acres of community space to enable easier access to the outdoors and more ways to experience the many mental and physical benefits of time spent outside.

After decades of inequity, Cobbs Creek is finally getting the green space they deserve. This project turned a two-acre paved asphalt schoolyard into a high-quality playground with new gardens, modern play equipment, and turf field and trees, to provide easier access to the outdoors – improving health, education, and community.

We believe that all kids deserve to play, laugh, and explore outdoors. So, with the addition of a new trail, along with other much needed and well-deserved improvements and amenities, this project is ensuring the entire Columbia Elementary community has access to a user-friendly outdoor space for environmental education and outdoor learning. It will also feature a stream, wildlife observation spots, trail signage, streambank, and vegetation improvements.

This project is creating a new green space in Chicago’s West Woodlawn neighborhood that will invite residents to honor important Black figures in the city’s history and the heroes of the Great Migration. It will convert vacant land into a series of sixteen gardens, giving the community an outdoor space to rest and reflect. The first garden will celebrate Mamie Till-Mobley, mother of Emmet Till, whose advocacy for her son after his murder launched the Civil Rights Movement.

As a part of a statewide effort to ensure all students have access to high-quality greenspaces, we’re advancing one of four pilot playgrounds in Minnesota, starting with the twenty-year-old Brooklyn Center Elementary playground. The playground is in dire need of care, updating, and design solutions to address lack of shade, water management, and air and noise pollution from an adjacent major highway. It will be transformed with trees, gathering spaces, public art, and green infrastructure that provides a more welcoming space for the entire community.

We know the mental and physical benefits of time spent outside can be incredibly transformative – especially for our youth. So, this project will transform the John F. Kennedy Elementary School’s asphalt parking lot into a multifaceted schoolyard. Not only will this new space support the student’s desire for growth, and reinforce the opportunities they have to enact real change, it will also provide a safe environment for them to better connect with nature, themselves, and each other.

Natural environments like parks - where people can congregate, connect with one another, and enjoy time outside - are important to growing communities. Unfortunately, Delta Park in Greeley, Colorado, is lacking many of the amenities their community needs. This project will give the community, which is primarily made up of an immigrant and refugee population, the kind of natural space they deserve. Through community-led development and working with TPL’s CORE (Community Outreach with Resident Experts) program, this project will create a high-quality park for residents that is beautiful, welcoming, and culturally relevant.

This project will renovate two rural schoolyards at underserved elementary schools into nature-rich community parks accessible to all residents. Schoolyards in both the Madras and Ontario communities will get the refresh they need to promote learning, exercise, connections with others, and of course, outdoor play. Plus, with plenty of shade being added, these new community spaces can now be enjoyed all year long.