Safe, clean and green Glebe parks for all!

Photo: This year’s Glebe parks clean-up will take place on Saturday, May 4.

Photo: Angus McCabe

By Angus McCabe

Happy spring once again everyone!

How fortunate we are in the Glebe to be home to 13 beautiful city parks along with other green spaces – an ongoing source of daily joy, peace, health and wonder for residents young and old.

The Glebe Community Association’s annual park cleanups, part of the City of Ottawa’s Spring Cleaning the Capital program, will take place this year on Saturday, May 4 starting at 10 a.m. (pouring rain date: Sunday, May 5).

These events can easily be turned into great opportunities for neighbours to gather for some fun park play and a little bit of community service as part of our ongoing effort to help keep our community’s parks safe, clean and green. If this sounds good to you, organize from the park “grassroots” up! Join with others and start planning now.

On the cleaning front, the main goal is to pick up litter. For parks with play areas, this includes giving the sand a rake over to remove any other dangerous items (to be carefully removed and safely contained by adults with gloves). In green areas, it is advisable to “leave” the leaves alone (yes, that’s why they’re called leaves, right?) and let nature do its thing.

If you can, bring along a rake, work gloves, a container (like an empty can of soup),and a few smaller, compostable bags to help consolidate any garbage we find into one garbage bag’s worth (or hopefully much less!) at each park (to minimize our use of larger single-use plastic bags).

Come together with your friends, family and neighbours to the park cleanup near you, make some new acquaintances, and create some more wonderful neighbourhood moments and memories!

Below is a listing of GCA Parks Committee contacts who plan to be on hand at the parks that morning. Always feel free to contact us at parks@glebeca.ca to get involved and organize for this and other Glebe parks initiatives in the years to come.

Angus McCabe is the chair of the GCA Parks Committee.

Glebe Parks Clean-up Information