Sustaining Parks: Friends of Kensington Playground
Planting day for Kensington’s new caterpillar garden.
Tucked away from the hustle and bustle of Chapel Street and the Saint Raphael Campus of Yale New Haven Hospital is Kensington Playground. Just two-thirds of an acre, it serves as a shady oasis in the densely settled Dwight neighborhood, which ranks last in park acreage per person in New Haven. Beneath a canopy of London plane trees are a splash pad, a butterfly garden, a caterpillar garden, and benches strewn throughout. Every Friday afternoon this summer, neighbors gathered to relax and start their weekend while the dedicated Friends of Kensington Playground continued cleaning, stewarding, and improving the park.
But this wasn’t always the case. In 2019 the City of New Haven began the process of selling the park to real estate developers. The Board of Alders voted in 2020 to sell the park for $1 to developers who would build 15 housing units on the lot. In response, concerned community members organized as the Friends of Kensington Playground, formally becoming a 501c3. The group did everything they could to spread awareness in the neighborhood, but in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic they were limited to door knocking and meeting on Zoom. The group filed a lawsuit in November of 2020 to protect the park from development.
In the midst of the legal dispute, the Friends of Kensington Playground continued to bring the community in and care for the park by hosting events for Easter, sharing bikes with children in the community, and holding a pumpkin festival. Given the lawsuit and community opposition, the developer withdrew the housing development plans in 2023, and the park was saved. Jane Comins, a member of the Friends of Kensington Playground, said of the effort, “We were all exhausted,” but they felt strengthened because “There was a whole community behind us.” While saving the park from development was a key milestone, there was still plenty of work to be done to improve it.
Last year, the Friends of Kensington Playground worked as a URI Greenspace group to plant five trees and a brand-new butterfly garden, which was combined with a sidewalk mural. This summer, the group returned with the same enthusiasm and passion to continue working to steward and improve their neighborhood’s park. Each Friday afternoon, the group, made up of core members of the Friends of Kensington Playground, volunteers from Fellowship Place, and local residents and youth, came to the shade of Kensington Playground to pour their love for the space into its soil. Our work began slowly, but for good reason; the Parks Department had started the process of installing several improvements in the park. They redid the sidewalks and added a new walkway to connect with the splash pad.
Initially the group’s work centered on caring for last year’s planting by weeding the garden beds, picking up trash, and watering the young trees. In the latter half of the summer, our work was dedicated to creating a brand-new caterpillar garden to complement the butterfly garden from last year. The design was modeled after “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” by Eric Carle, to make it recognizable and exciting to the children who use the park. We made each segment of the caterpillar’s body out of bunches of pollinator-friendly flowers to bring both beauty and biodiversity into the park.
Children joining volunteers to spread mulch on the flower beds!
While we planted the new flowers, residents regularly stopped by to say their thanks to the group and ask about the new additions. While they did not always join the work, the love the neighborhood has for this park is undeniable. Some days, children playing in the park would come by to help out, making the caterpillar garden a space for beauty and for learning. Once the plants were added, we lined the border of the garden with bricks and placed a large stone as the caterpillar’s head. When we left work for the summer, the plan was to finish the garden by painting new sidewalk murals for both the butterfly and caterpillar gardens as a community event for everyone to join.
Adding finishing touches to the new caterpillar garden.
Later this October, the Parks Department will be installing a new playground and swing sets to the park! For the Friends of Kensington Playground and the residents who use the park day-to-day, this is a monumental moment. It marks a tangible shift in the city’s support for the park by investing resources into its improvement. The now-hopeful future of this park is a testament to the impact of dedicated community organizing and neighborhood representation. In addition to receiving a new playscape, the Friends of Kensington Playground will be hosting their 5th Annual Pumpkin Festival this October. Kensington Playground demonstrates the importance of green spaces to their communities and the reciprocal relationship of the community care needed to sustain parks.