Volunteering with Lexington Parks and Recreation
Interested in leaving a lasting impact on Parks and Recreation facilities, green spaces, and programs? Parks and Recreation offers many volunteer opportunities, short-term and long-term, ranging from removing invasives, plantings, citizen science efforts, teaching classes in our community centers, and much more! Visit our website (https://www.lexingtonky.gov/parks-recreation-volunteers) to learn about general opportunities, and reach out to Callie Dickman at [email protected] if interested in arranging volunteer work!
Volunteering with Lexington Chapter Wild Ones
We offer members and friends several opportunities to help manage the landscapes in the Bluegrass and to contribute to our chapter’s work. Please contact us if you are interested in any of these activities:
1.) The Wild Ones pollinator garden in Wellington Park. We created this garden in 2014 near
the park entrance on Wellington Way. Most of the plants are sun-loving wildflowers, but we planted a few shrubs and grasses as well. Wild Ones members have managed the garden from its beginning. Individual volunteers can take charge of a section, mostly keeping it weeded. Five or six times a year we also meet as a group for larger clean-up or restoration projects. We have no regular schedule for those meetings. We get many compliments for our garden which is beautiful throughout the growing season. Perhaps its highlight comes in October, when the seed heads of smooth beardtongue contrast with the flowers of pink muhligrass.
2.) A working group to remove invasive plants at Hisle Park. We formed this volunteer group in the Fall of 2020. Originally we targeted ornamental pear trees in an area that was meant to be a prai
rie, but we soon finished that project and moved on to other spaces near the driveway and parking lot, cutting down bush honeysuckle, winter creeper and other invasives. In 2021 we cleared a small woodland around a pond of honeysuckle and multiflora rose, which dramatically change the landscape around that water feature. We work closely with the LFUCG Division of Parks and Recreation to make sure our work is not only useful to the city but also honored by the city. We meet regularly on Monday afternoons, 2-4, gathering in the parking lot at the end of the driveway. We take a break during the summer from mid-June to mid-September to dodge the heat and the chiggers.
3.) Managing the landscape at St.Michael’s Church. Over the last 20 years St. Michael’s has made 
significant strides toward native plant landscaping. There is a large detention basin planted with wildflowers; there is a long tree and shrub border along the parking lot, and the foundation plantings are mostly native as well. Since our chapter holds its indoor meetings and its annual plant exchange at St. Michael’s, some of our members and friends may want to help manage the church’s landscape. Because of the large diversity of native plants, this church property is a great place to study how native plants can be used in an urban landscape.