Queens’ Green Thumb Gets Thumbs Up
By Josh Parish
Looks like Queens’ park workers have been doing their homework.
The city’s guardians of green places, New Yorkers For Parks, last month released its Third Annual Report Card on Parks, a report card-style list rating 190 neighborhood parks throughout the five boroughs. The only two boroughs to land a spot among the city’s best without landing a single one among the city’s worst? Queens and Staten Island. (Staten Island is a borough with about 1/5 our population and less than half as many public parks, by the way.)
Tenney Park in Glen Oaks nabbed the highest score for Queens, placing it among the top ten best parks in all of New York. Grades were handed out by NY4P based on a park’s amount of green space, sitting and playground area, and bathroom and water fountain availability, among other factors. Tenney’s lack of graffiti, and clean, safe playground helped earn its position on the city’s honor roll.
Other parks in Queens that received A+ ratings are Doughboy Plaza in Woodside and Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria.
Making the cut into the NY4P list’s upper echelon wasn’t easy; Powell’s Cove Park, a beautifully kept piece of land with great views of the Bronx Whitestone Bridge, was demoted to an A- simply because of the presence of invasive plant species.
Two Queens parks, Captain Tilly in Jamaica Hills and Hallets Cove Playground in Astoria, also boosted their scores by three letter grades since last year’s report card. In 2004, both parks were given F’s for their conditions—this year, each earned B’s.
If you’d like to see how your neighborhood park fared, here’s NY4P’s full rated list of Queens’ best green spots. Just be ready with gold stars for your local groundskeepers.
