We get it. You’re hearing this week from every nonprofit you’ve ever supported, leading up to Give to the Max Day on Thursday, November 16.
The pitch from Friends of the Parks and Trails is different this year. We are not asking for general support to maintain or enhance our organization. Instead, we are looking outward.
All our Give to the Max Day donations will go toward funding Peggy’s Grove, an installation of trees to create shade and a quiet resting place in one of the four parks in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood. Peggy’s Grove will honor Peggy Lynch, our indomitable founder — who turns 90 in December and who has left a lasting impact in city and county parks.
- Peggy founded Friends of the Parks and Trails after learning that developers were planning to build housing in Crosby Farm Regional Park.
- She helped establish the No Net Loss provision that voters approved in 1994, which helps to protect parkland throughout Ramsey County.
- Peggy also was a force in creating the citizen-led parks and rec commissions in both the city and the county.
Worthy of her own grove at a time when a lack of mature shade trees — urban tree canopy — has been cited as a contributor to heat islands in the city? We think so, and we hope you will, too. Peggy explicitly has told us that she wants to ensure Friends of the Parks and Trails plants more trees.
Along with Frogtown Green and utilizing the expertise of the Forestry division within the Parks and Recreation Department in St. Paul, we have a goal to choose a park, select the variety of trees to plant and commence work in early April 2024. That the grove would be in Frogtown, one of the city’s most diverse and economically challenged neighborhoods, is significant to Peggy.
She wants to make the greatest difference where there is greatest need.
Won’t you help her make a difference? Give as generously as you are able (keeping in mind that this gift counts toward the tree initiative, not annual membership renewal) at our Give to the Max Day 2023 page. Thank you, on behalf of the selfless and visionary Peggy Lynch!
Photo on homepage by Jan Huber on Unsplash