Volunteers at AYLUS visited Steppingstone Park on May 19th 2024 to clean up and landscape their neighborhood park. Steppingstone is a local park in Great Neck that overlooks the Long Island Sound. People go there to party, picnic on the positively maintained fields of grass, go sailing in the sound, play in the playground and more. The park’s community and team who work behind the scenes ensure that all visitors and residents enjoy their time engaging in the park’s activities and admiring the scenery.
This week, AYLUS members split into groups to accomplish the following tasks: picking up stones by the beach, planting wheelbarrows full of flowers (Multicolored Impatiens) by the park’s entrance, and laying down mulch in the flowerbeds. Those who picked the stones endured the beach’s lack of cover from the sun and were recommended to wear gloves and sunscreen as they walked the length of the beach, cleaning up any stones that lay there. Fortunately, the group assigned to the planting of flowers were in the shade of the surrounding greenery and worked in partners. However, pulling the flowers out of the containers they came in, separating some of the flower’s compacted soil and roots and digging a hole for it to be planted in using trowels was a challenge in itself, particularly when planting the flowers at the back and with the insects roaming around. The end result was diagonal rows of flowers in various colors, both of which are small but necessary details that make these flowers beautiful to look at and not an eyesore prior to the plants flourishing outwards. When both groups completed these individual tasks, they regrouped to work on laying the mulch in the flowerbeds. Each person took a bedding fork or a wheelbarrow to finish this job. The majority of those who had the bedding forks would spread the mulch in the flowerbeds with a few following the people with the wheelbarrows to a large mulch pile to collect and transport the mulch back to the flowerbeds to be spread. After two and a half hours of work, AYLUS members would take their weekly picture and sign off having accomplished their three separate goals for the day to further beautify Steppingstone.
Having cleaned up the stones along the beach, glorified the entrance of the park with florals and protected the flowerbeds with a layer of mulch, AYLUS volunteers hope to do just as much if not more in the weeks to come to improve the quality of life at Steppingstone Park in Great Neck.
The AYLUS members who participated in this week’s task are: Serena Chen, Jason zeng, Isla Zeng, guangqi Lu, xingchen Jin, Ankie Huang, Ang Chen, Lucy Yang, Peishan Luo, Elaine Xing, Catherine Tao, Catherine Wang, Zhaoxi Chen, Audree Chen, Chen Liang, Jing Liang, Nianqiao Zhu (2.5 hrs)
Brandon Li and Derek Wang (1.5 hr)