Giving Rye: Meet Friends of Rye Town Park
Giving Rye is a new occasional feature highlighting non-profits and community groups in and around the City of Rye. Today meet Diana Page of Friends of Rye Town Park.
Your Name: Diana Page
Organization: Friends of Rye Town Park
Your role: President
MyRye.com: Tell us your organization’s mission.
Page: We work to improve Rye Town Park’s beautiful greenspaces, and advocate to improve the park and beach experience for park goers. This year, we expanded our reach to include redesigning the entranceway of the park’s historic Tower Building and plaza.
How long have you operated in Rye?
Page: 33 years, since 1991.
What programming or work in Rye is the organization best known for?
Page: We are small – currently eight volunteer board members – with no paid staff. Our main focus is to beautify the green spaces in Rye Town Park and to enhance the experience of every visitor. Our Chief Gardening Officer, local gardener Lucy Berkoff, donates her time and expertise to design and oversee the planting and maintenance of 20 gardens and meadows in the park using a majority of native, pollinator-friendly plants, flowers, trees and shrubs. We fund a local landscaper to manage the labor under her volunteer supervision. We have taken on this gardening work in recent years at the request of the Park Director, because he did not have the budget to do it with the park’s staff. We spend roughly $25,000 annually to plant and maintain the existing gardens and plant environmentally beneficial trees and shrubs throughout the park. This work delights visitors and provides crucial support to the ecology, and the park does not have the funding or staff to do it without us. You may also know us from the amazing Rye Town Park honey we harvest every year thanks to our volunteer beekeepers, Board Member Chris Meier and Park Director Russ Gold, and from the beautiful daffodil hillside we planted with Chris Duncan and the Little Garden Club of Rye.
Looking back across 2024, what were your organization’s top achievements?
Page: In 2024, we invested over $105,000 in Rye Town Park, up from $62,000 in 2023. In addition to our work on the greenspaces and gardens (which we fund annually at a cost of about $25,000), we undertook a massive reimagining of the Tower Building plaza and the crumbling and dilapidated entrance to the building itself. The before/after photos tell the story. We:
- funded the restoration of the building’s six main doors (thanks to Claire Bosch Griffiths for selecting the perfect paint color!), three leaded glass transom windows, second-story balcony doors and pergola, all of which were in a state of thorough disrepair.
- restored and painted the entranceway stairs and the balcony columns and railings.
- enlarged and expanded the gardens in front of the Tower Building, investing in Belgian block, new plants, trees and shrubs and cheerful new red Adirondack chairs in which to sit and enjoy the gorgeous Long Island Sound views.
- repaired the crumbling fountain in front of the Tower Building and turned it into a large planter filled with native grasses.
It has been so gratifying to see so many members of the public enjoying a previously unsightly and ignored area of the park this summer and fall.
Additionally, we reclaimed an area that was filled with broken asphalt from the parking lot and transformed it into a grassy picnic area lined with native grasses and shrubs. We will add picnic tables in the future.
In our Dearborn meadow, now in its second year, we removed invasive plant species and replaced them with native and pollinator-friendly plants, trees, shrubs and flowers. We were rewarded not only with the meadow’s extraordinary beauty, but also with the bounty of birds, bees and monarch butterflies which call it home!
Looking forward to 2025, what will be your top initiatives?
Page: In 2025, we will continue our efforts to plant beautiful gardens and trees to greet our visitors and to support the local ecology. We are always considering bigger projects like this year’s redesign and restoration at the Tower Building. The park has many needs and inadequate funding. With our community’s financial support, we can continue to make meaningful improvements.
Tell us about the population you serve and how they can get involved with your programming and services.
Page: We serve all Rye Town Park visitors.
Are you a 501(c)(3) non-profit with tax exempt status?
Page: Yes
How can local residents support your organization?
Page: Please donate at our website or volunteer with us in the park. We host beach cleanups and occasionally need volunteers to help us plant our gardens. And if you have ideas for projects or improvements to the park, we’d love to hear from you.
What local Rye residents and area businesses have been the longest, steadiest supporters of your organization?
Page: The Rye City School District has been a fantastic source of volunteers for the park. Just this year, Midland fourth graders planted gardens with us, Milton fifth graders devoted some of their May Service Week to cleaning up our beach and the Rye High School Environmental Conservation Club removed 30 lbs of trash at their September beach cleanup. Rye High School spring interns regularly make a huge contribution with their time and hard work in the park.
We celebrated Earth Day in April by partnering with Rye mom Katherine Doherty and her daughter Kayla, who organized a beach cleanup with Save the Sound. 60+ volunteers blanketed our beach and removed massive amounts of plastic and other trash. Kayla aspires to be a marine biologist and is currently working on a sound water research project in Stamford, Connecticut. We are lucky to have young environmentalists like Kayla making such important contributions to our community.
Tell us about you:
How long have you been in your current role?
Page: Six years.
Is the role full time or part time? Paid or volunteer?
Page: Volunteer, part-time.
How would your friends and family describe you in one word?
Page: Kind.
Where did you grow up?
Page: Early years in Maryland; moved to Westchester County in 5th grade.
What is your favorite unimportant thing about you?
Page: I am unstoppable at trivia games.
If the next five years is a chapter in your life, what is this chapter about?
Page: This chapter is about ensuring that my children thrive as they make their way through middle school and high school, and off to college. They are incredibly kind, smart, thoughtful, creative, fascinating people. My husband Tyler and I are so proud of them.
What would you do if you were not afraid?
Page: Such an interesting question, made me really think! But there isn’t anything I’d want to do that fear prevents me from doing. Other constraints maybe, but not fear.
Where do you live in Rye and how many years have you lived in the City?
Page: My family and I live very near Rye Town Park; we have lived in Rye for nine years.
Thanks Diana!
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