AUSTIN — Thousands of people spent their morning volunteering for "It’s My Park Day."
The Austin Parks Foundation put on the city-wide event. On Saturday, volunteers at nearly 100 different parks and trails picked up trash, participated in tree mulching and trimmed vines.
“We picked up a fair amount of garbage,” said Steve Johnson, a volunteer. “I mean there's quite a bit of stuff."
"I just like being part of a community effort and being with all the volunteers,” said Ramona Nye, another volunteer. “The parks are the jewel of Austin and I really appreciate our parks.”
Jonathan Barona with the Festival Beach Food Forest said the goal was to educate and inspire those in the community to get out and enjoy their parks.
“One is it helps make sure that our parks are great and the other part is it helps reconnect people to parkland and reconnect people to kind of the earth,” said Barona.
Fifth graders from Gullet Elementary built two gaga pits to improve their school park, too.
Organizers said the day's event drew nearly 3,000 volunteers.