The Grove went very green for Park(ing) Day

One side of McFarlane Road was turned into a park today for Park(ing) Day and it made a lot of difference. We thought the Grove was green, but this made it much more so.


Early in the morning, about 7 am, the Parks Department started delivering sod, at about 8 am, Jennifer Garcia, Environmental intern for Commissoiner Francis Suarez and Mark Schrieber and Olga Cano from the US Green Building Council started laying the sod down.


Ten parking spaces were donated by the Miami Parking Authority and they were made green by a large team of volunteers.


Artist Nancy Martini turned her green space into a user-friendly art gallery and people stopped by throughout the day to draw and visit.


City Commissioner Suarez was the only one of the Commissioners to make it out today, while he did not fly a kite as planned (the kite was there but the wind was not), he did enjoy some lemonade provided by AnnaMaria Windisch-Hunt, Katey Penner and Nicky Prince.


And what would a Coconut Grove event be without the Coconut Grove Drum Circle, from left, Mark Richards, Liz Gibson and Karen and Richard Deilke.

Come back tomorrow for many more photos of the great day. It was a lot of fun and just as planned. We were asked by many other merchants to include their streets next year, so who knows, we may have a very large Park(ing) Day next year.

We talked about making the green space permanent, but what took the volunteers an hour to do would probably take the City and County years, we can just picture street closures and permits and a non-ending project. So maybe the quick temporary greenery is the way to go for now.

People enjoyed it, they stopped visited and went green for the day.