AYLUS Oakland Gardens Branch Beautifies The Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground for Juneteenth Observation (06/20/2026)
On Saturday, June 20th, 2026 from 8:45 to 12:45, volunteers from AYLUS Oakland Gardens Branch cleaned up The Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Grounds for Juneteenth observation for their 232nd event. They work together with Maureen Regan, who is a community advocate, fostering youth education for environmental justice, health and Wellness, and climate change with a focus on a sustainable urban space. She sits on many local boards, VP of Operations at Queens Historical Society, Co-Chair of Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground Conservancy, President of Queensboro Hill Flushing Civic, Voelker Orth Museum and on the CAB of NY Presbyterian Hosp Queens and Queens College. She created Green Earth Urban Gardens in 2011 to address local green spaces and food justice in the community. She also is a board member of Community Board 7, which serves all of Northeast Queens.
At the beginning of our event, our members help carry chairs and tables, and set the chairs up in rows for the Juneteenth observation that will be occurring later. After setting up the chairs, members went to help bring tools from the truck to the working area. Then, our parent advisors team helped put our members into groups for the event.
During the event, members used shovels for weeding, loppers for trimming the trees, rakes for raking the leaves, and trash bags to collect all these natural debris. Firstly, members used rakes in order to pile up the leaves within the garden beds so that members with big snow shovels are able to scoop the leaves up and put them into the trash bags that some members are holding. Other members used metal shovels to dig out the weeds and their roots fully so that it doesn’t grow back again. Then they will shake out dirt in the roots so that when they put it in the trash bag, the bag won’t be weighed down by a lot of dirt. Not only that, members will use their hands to pull vines from the ground and from the fences that border the garden beds. While most of our members worked on these garden beds, some of our taller and stronger members used loppers to trim the trees around the gardens and in different parts of the burial ground so that the burial ground is clean and maintained. With the branches that are trimmed off, members made sure to pick them up and then put them in the back of the truck so that they can be properly disposed of.
After finishing up with cleaning, our members put away the tools back to the truck before taking a quick break with the sweet drinks and granola bars that Maureen provided to replenish our energy. Then we gathered around the memorial stone for the Juneteenth observation. Speakers like Maureen Regan, who is a huge part of the community and on her second term on community board 7; Robbie Garrison, Co Chair of the Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground Conservancy; John C. Liu, Senator of NY; Sandra Ung, City Council Member of NYC; Rev. Dr. Richard O. McEachern, Pastor of Macedonia AME Church; and many more. Rev. Dr. Richard O. McEachern, being part of Macedonia AME Church, advocates for education and rights for African Americans while preaching the gospel. They continue to advocate for freedom and uplift those in need. We learned that Juneteenth is the last day where everyone in the US got the news that the Civil War is over and slavery is abolished. Furthermore, we learned about the history of the Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground. It is a place for the deceased to lay, however, it wasn’t happening for Native Americans and coloured people so people came together to advocate for change, leading to the burial ground to be repurposed into a burial ground that is for everyone. From this, Robbie Garrison told us an important message, that Black history is American history. Not only that, it is showing off what African Americans were able to do, always been able to do, and will continue to do as equality for all of humanity, not just a portion of it.
We would like to give special thanks to Maureen Regan for helping us, providing us some snacks to replenish our energy through the event. We would also like to thank all the speakers today for teaching us about the history of the conservancy and leaving us with an important message, equality for all humanity. Lastly, we like to thank all our members for their hard work and coming to today’s event.
Our Volunteers:
1. Jia Qi Liu: 4 hours
2. Hong Hao Liu: 4 hours
3. Selena You: 4 hours
4. Stephanie You: 4 hours
5. Sophia You: 4 hours
6. Iokseng Lin: 4 hours
7. Ioknor Lin: 4 hours
8. Ioklee Lin: 4 hours
9. Zhiheng Zhou: 4 hours
10. Ricky Song: 4 hours
11. Jason Liu: 4 hours
12. Alexander Lu: 4 hours
13. Kevin Huang: 4 hours
14. Tsz Ho Feng: 4 hours
15. Kaisa Wu: 4 hours
16. Jayden Chen: 4 hours
17. Enda Zheng: 4 hours
18. Sophia Lu: 4 hours
19. Nuoyan Chen: 4 hours
20. Kaden He: 4 hours
21. Jiansheng Chen: 4 hours
22. Kenny Ou: 4 hours
23. Nathan Jin: 4 hours
24. Cynthia Shi: 4 hours
25. Tiffany Kong: 4 hours
26. Henry Jiang: 4 hours
27. Adrian Jiang: 4 hours
28. Pai Pai Xu: 4 hours
29. Jayden Wang: 4 hours
30. Haoze Gao: 4 hours
31. Ruolin Gao: 4 hours
32. Honglei Luo: 4 hours
33. Ivan Cao: 4 hours
34. Eason Lin: 4 hours
35. Osborn Zhang: 4 hours
36. Austin Li: 4 hours
37. Vicki Lin: 4 hours
38. Elina Lee: 4 hours
39. Brandon Lin: 4 hours
40. Aiden Lin: 4 hours
41. Yuhan Lin: 4 hours
42. Zihan Shi: 4 hours
43. Matthew Lin: 4 hours
44. Luke Chen: 4 hours
45. Rui Zhu: 4 hours
46. Vincent He: 3 hours
47. Linan Cao: 2.5 hours
48. Dylan Chen: 2.5 hours
Parent Adviser Team:
Fannie Li: 5 hours
Karen Liao: 5 hours
Faye Liu: 5 hours
Report Written by: Jia Qi (Angela) Liu
