Unofficial Stewards
There are hundreds of paid employees who take care of Golden Gate Park and many times more who sign up to do volunteer work there. And then there are those who decide to adopt a patch of the park and care for it as if it were their own. I’m especially moved by these unofficial acts of stewardship.
Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass, “once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.” She’s talking about gardening, but gardens have always served as metaphor for a way of living. The seeds planted by these unofficial stewards sow generosity. They sprout a sense of pubic good and a feeling of connectedness to the place and to other people. All of which we desperately need these days.
Let me tell you about two examples.
Ray Tracy’s spot
Ray Tracy watches over the ping pong tables on JFK Promenade (by the 8th Avenue entrance.) He’s been passionate about the game for years. Since retiring from working with juvenile offenders, he has ample time to devote to it. He competes, teaches youth classes at Goldman Tennis Center, offers private lessons. The coffee/dinner table in his studio apartment is a ping-pong table. He’s a font of table tennis trivia and information.
And so he was thrilled when in the early days of the pandemic, Rec and Park installed a concrete table on JFK. It quickly became a popular stop on the new promenade drawing people of all ages. Tracy, who lives nearby, became a fixture there. “I was kind of the hall monitor.”
When balls and paddles disappeared, he took it on himself to replace them. And when an elderly neighbor complained it was too crowded for her to play, he began bugging Rec and Park to put in more tables.
Months went by. He finally took matters into his own hands and installed two more tables himself, one that he bought and another he built with a friend. He moved around the potted trees to create a windbreak for players. To ensure everyone could get a chance to play, he marked the top of one with a Sharpie: Kids and newbies first.
“Everything was wonderful. I was literally getting 100 people on a Saturday and Sunday playing on these three tables,” Tracy recalls.
But it’s against the rules for people to bring their own equipment into the park — there are limits to even the best-intended stewardship — and eventually Rec and Park replaced Tracy’s tables with another concrete one. He doesn’t like that there are now only two tables, which, to his mind, are too close together.
Still, he continues as the ping pong spot’s hall monitor. He’s not looking for games — he only completes indoors — but took after the place. He brings a broom, squeegee and leaf blower from home to keep the area clean. He offers tips to players who want them. He lets Rec and Park know when new paddles are needed and replenishes the stock of balls. He was offended when someone suggested he was just there to trawl for students for his classes and private lessons. “I just wanted to bring people together and have fun and play ping pong. Make it a good place.”
Kathleen’s Corner
Kathleen Russell began making a good a place at the corner of Fulton and Stanyan more than four decades ago. She lived in the apartment building across the street and always had dogs that needed walking— first Love, then Poppy, then finally, a scruffy terrier named Gracie. Because of the dogs, she passed through the corner into the park several times every day for years. At some point, recalls her friend, Alison Kubick, “she decided to adopt the corner.”
She was taking on a tough charge. “It’s not the corner of happy and healthy” as Kubick put it. There’s a constant din of traffic, ambulances wailing from St. Mary’s, unhoused people sacking out on the bus benches, an endless tide of trash.
She focused on a small triangular island rimmed with cobble stones just inside the corner. It was an unloved, overlooked little spot, rarely visited by park gardeners. She pulled out the weeds, put in Icelandic poppies and other flowers and greenery. She hauled a hose from home to water it regularly. In the center, she planted one of her favorites, a Princess tree that bloomed big purple flowers.
“She was out there every day with her hoes ” says Kristin Tièche, who lived upstairs from Russell and bonded with her neighbor over their shared love of animals. “She was kind of like a neighborhood fixture. Everyone knew her.”
The garden was repeatedly vandalized. People pulled out flowers, left garbage, trashed the Princess tree. Russell took it all in stride; nothing could dim her sense of joy. “She would just keep planting,” says Kubick. She continued even as she grew frail.
Under Russell’s steady care, the corner was transformed and in 2014 San Francisco Beautiful honored her with an “Unsung Hero” award, noting “It isn’t just her garden that’s beautiful. Kathleen greets everyone – from tourist to neighbor to homeless person in need – with love and light.”
In 2018, Russell died at the age of 86. Friends gathered in the park for her memorial. The next day four of them decided they would adopt the corner and continue her work. The group included Tièche; Kubick, a long-time friend of Russell’s from their days working as nurses; and Elise Somerville, who got to know Russell because they both walked their dogs in the Panhandle. They didn’t really know each other before Russell’s death, but carrying on her legacy has turned them into friends.
They planted a sign on the island announcing it as “Kathleen’s Corner” and began monthly work parties to keep the garden going. (They meet the first Saturday of each month from 10-12 and all are welcome.)
In the seven years since, the group has picked up a few more volunteers and expanded the garden to cover the area flanking a wall along Stanyan Street. They’ve filled it with a host of plants, most of them natives, such as salvia, buckwheat, evening primrose, California phacelia and red flowering currant. They’ve taken special care with a new Princess tree that was planted at her memorial.
They also raised $6,000 to dedicate a park bench in her name. The plaque declares “She shared beauty and kindness with all who entered here.” The bench has drawn a new group to Kathleen’s Corner: people taking part in geocaching scavenger hunts. One of the clues directs participants to “sit with Kathleen.” Every so often, the garden volunteers find a geocacher sitting there.
In addition to honoring Russell, the volunteers want to “make the corner more inviting and welcoming because it’s a major entrance to Golden Gate Park,” Tièche says. Unlike other park entrances, there’s no signage announcing that fact. Sometimes, Tièche says, she’ll be working there and tourists will stop and ask directions to the park. “And I’m like you’re in it.”
I made my first visit to Kathleen’s Corner with Tièche in late December. The volunteers had decorated it for the holidays with evergreen garlands on the bench and a nutcracker statue on the island. Tièche was distraught to see that something — the recent storms or vandalism — had knocked down the pink-blossomed mallow bush since she stopped by the garden earlier that morning. She called a Rec and Park Gardner to help her cut it back and stake what remained.
I visited again for the January workday. Kubick and Sommerville were there, as well as another volunteer whose name I never got and Dan Heckman, a Rec and Park gardener who’s been working with the group for the past two years. Kubick and Sommerville were wearing the Kathleen Corner “uniform”: a grey T-shirt with a purple princess tree blossom on the front and Kathleen’s Garden Volunteer in purple script on the back.
The tasks that day included raking up the mess of leaves from the walnut tree that spreads its branches over the garden and planting clivia, a plant with glossy long leaves that they are using to define the edges of the now-expanded garden.
“This is the worst time of year,” lamented Kubick. And it was true: most of the garden was bare. Still, you could tell the space was well tended.
As Sommerville was raking the island garden, a woman walking her dog stopped to read the sign about “Kathleen’s Corner.” The sign keeps being stolen and the group keeps replacing it.
The woman told Sommerville she had a bunch of succulents. “Would you like them?” she asked. Sommerville declined; they already had plenty. As the women talked, the dog lifted his leg and peed on the sign.
Sommerville wasn't bothered. She just laughed, saying later. “You can’t stop that, And maybe the dog was saying ‘this is mine.’ Kathleen would have liked that.”
And now the necessary disclaimer:
In case you’re wondering, as my husband was, whether anyone can just start gardening on on their own in the park, the answer is no. “Volunteer engagement is at the discretion of the operations staff,” says spokeswoman Tamara Aparton. The group tending Kathleen’s Corner is “a diligent and consistent group who has a strong partnership with the gardeners. As a result, the arrangement strengthens and enhances the area.”
"once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself." Yup. Wonderful story - thank you