On Saturday April 2, 2011 from 10 am to 1 pm  Friends of Overington Park will be getting our park in shape for spring.
We need your help! Come out and join us cutting in two new flower beds, cleaning up established ones, mulching and composting our 16 new trees (being planted by PHS during the next month), erecting fencing around the trees, and general clean-up. There will be refreshment for all who help out. Tools, bags and and gloves will be supplied. Come out and meet your neighbors, see our 1200 daffodils in bloom, they are starting to break through the ground already. Spring is coming, get outside and enjoy Overington Park. You can make a difference beautifying our park!
Thanks for your help, Friends of Overington Park

From Diane K.

Friends of Overington Park, FOOP, will have their next meeting on Tuesday March 1st, from 7 to 8pm, at the CORA center, Orthodox and Adams Ave. We will be talking about PHS tree planting, and the Mayor’s clean up on April 2nd, where America the Beautiful will be joining with us to plant trees and make our garden beds ready for planting. Please come out and help us plan for upcoming events in the park. Hope to see you there!

Diane Kunze reports on the bulb planting  on Saturday November 13th:

We had some volunteers come and work like crazy, because they had seen our plea for help on your sight. We planted 1000 bulbs in the park! It should be wonderful come spring. Thanks to all our volunteers who came out, very last minute, and got the job done. Overington Park will look like a mini Longwood Gardens from Feb thru April. We planted bulbs in large groups around flower beds and a 50 foot run, between two beds, down Orthodox Street. The bulbs came to us from Longwood Garden, via PHS (Pennsylvania Horticultural Society). They were the biggest bulbs I’ve ever seen. The display should be spectacular! Keep an eye out this spring for the best daffodil show in Philadelphia right here in Frankford!

This is an email I got this week about the park from Sandi Gammon:

Hello, I was wondering if you could get me in touch with the “Friends of Overington Park” that are often mentioned on your website. My great-grandmother was Poppy Overington and she grew up on that property – they even had her wedding reception at the house there in 1924! My parents and grandparents took me out to the park about ten years ago and I remember being sad to see the shape it was in. I wanted to thank the people who help to keep it looking nice these days. Not only are they improving their community but they are unknowingly doing a great service to my family’s memory. I am so happy that people are enjoying the park and that it is cared for.

It’s nice to know others have seen the showplace this park is becoming.

I just wanted to thank everyone for all the great work that was done this past Saturday! 36 hard working, caring neighbors and friends worked cleaning up our park and getting it ready for winter. THANKS to everyone! You raked the perimeter of the Park, cleaned up the sidewalks, filled 50 bags with leaves for composting in Fairmount Park, and 12 contractor bags of trash/weeds. Together you weeded and mulched 9 garden beds – dug up two beds of Canna bulbs for winter storage, planted 6 chrysanthemums, 12 Easter lilies, and mulched 20 trees! The park will look beautiful this spring thanks to all the great work our volunteers did this past Saturday. I also need to thank the generous contributions from Tony Payton’s office for flyers, Dan Savage for pretzels, Lorraine Fortino for water, ROTC Joe for doughnuts and the rest of our group for their time and commitment to Overington Park! Without your help the park would not be the wonderful place we have come to enjoy. Thanks for your hard work, and time you have all given to make Frankford a better place! It was a beautiful day, made better by your caring! Diane Kunze, Friend of Overington Park

It was a beautiful Fall day today and a perfect day to sit on a park bench and watch the passing scene.  So I went over to Leiper and Orthodox to see what was happening at the festival.  I finally got the opportunity to get Diane and John on camera to find out once and for all what they are up to.  You can see the results below.