In celebration of Ballard's green spaces, Groundswell NW features and celebrates a "Park of the Month" and the community around it.  In May, the spotlight is on Webster Park, its history and a new group forming to maintain it.

Amy Janas is leading the effort to keep Webster Park looking good and here's what she had to say about the park:
 
"I love urban parks, “pocket parks” and urban green spaces.  I don’t love certain types of morning glory and graffiti.  The morning glory and graffiti prompted me to get involved with Webster Park. 
 
While my young children were on the swings or digging in the sand, I would untangle and pull out morning glory.  I started bringing my gardening gloves to the park.  I’d pull morning glory, then grass from the sandy area. Next, dandelions.  My young children would run over to pluck a few weeds and then return to their play.  Webster Park is our “other backyard” and I’m practically raising my children there.  It seemed perfectly natural to tend to the weeds.
 
Then, last March, the graffiti started showing up.  My oldest child was starting to sound out words and I didn’t want the first words he read to be of the unsavory and uninteresting sort—by the hand of a metallic-pen yielding vandal—so, I added the Graffiti Hotline number to my phone contact list.  After a few weeks of leaving messages, (the Parks Dept was amazing and got most graffiti removed within 24 hours) I called the Parks Dept and asked if I could volunteer to remove graffiti myself.
 
That led me to inquire if there was an existing group maintaining Webster Park.  I asked the Parks Department and asked longtime neighbors.  There had been a group, they reported, but it had been several years since anything had been planned.  I called around, searched online and kept hearing and seeing one name: Lillian Riley. 
 
After doing some more research on Webster Park and Groundswell NW, it’s fair to say that if you find yourself enjoying a park in Ballard, there is a mountain of citizens and city employees to thank, but pressed to select one name, I pick Lillian Riley. 
 
Her phone number was passed along to me and I called her.  I had one of the best phone conversations I had in a long time and was treated to the story of how Webster Park came to be.  I next got to see photos of people attending fundraisers, a t-shirt design contest and a thick binder full of pages of people who supported the park by purchasing the lovely gold leaves that are inlaid among the hardscape.
 
It’s hard to imagine, but fifteen years ago, the area where Webster Park now sits was a large, grey asphalt parking lot.  The grove of trees in the NE corner and the trees and shrubs along the west border and along NW 68th St did not exist.
 
If you’ve been to Webster Park, you know what a gem it is.  If you haven’t been there, you should visit it.  The park offers a play structure, swings, sand, grass area, small treed areas, is pesticide-free and hosts a unique sundial.  Charles Bigger, a local sculptor who created the artwork on the retaining walls.
 
Friends of Webster Park is a newly-sprouted group forming with the intention of helping maintain the park through work parties, discussing options for improvement and repair and planning to mark Webster Park’s 15-year anniversary in June 2012.  We are looking for volunteers to join us!  We are able to work at the park with the kind support of the Seattle Parks Department."

For more information, or to volunteer, please contact Amy Janas by email at webster.park.ballard@gmail.com.
 
Webster Park is located behind the Nordic Heritage Museum at NW 68th St. and 32nd Ave NW and is pleased to be Groundswell NW's "Park of the Month” for May 2011.