The project, the 10th annual "Fall for Your Park," involved numerous state, city, and local organizations that contributed money, plants, gardening equipment, muscle, music, and boxes of Polish pastries.
Christine Long, 77, and her husband, Bill, 73, got up early to catch the 8 a.m. No. 25 bus from their senior housing complex in Fishtown to Campbell Square in Port Richmond. Until two years ago, they lived a few blocks from the park, which is at Allegheny Avenue and Belgrade Street. They volunteer Monday evenings from April through November, helping to rake leaves, mulch, and pick up litter.
At 10 a.m., when the politicians arrived for a formal ceremony, Christine had already filled a large plastic bucket with garbage she'd collected, probing her long-handled grabbing tool into the grass and bushes.
Bill, who had an unsuccessful hip transplant last year, leaned on a cane held in one hand, his grabbing tool in the other, as he slowly took the winding park path toward his wife of 49 years.
Even though they no longer live in Port Richmond, he said, they feel an allegiance. "We get together with about 15 others to clean up people's trash and papers," he said. "We enjoy it."
A dozen regal London plane trees and maples, planted during the nation's sesquicentennial, have lived to witness Campbell Square's fortunes rise and fall. In the 1950s, the park, with three Roman Catholic churches around it, was a communal backyard.
"You used to see First Communion processions coming through," said Joan Reilly, senior director of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's Philadelphia Green program, which coordinated yesterday's event. "But neglected spaces become dangerous spaces."
