Six Magical Forest Park Forever Highlights of 2021
We know this continues to be a difficult year for so many. Here at Forest Park Forever, we are sending best wishes to all of you for health, hope and happiness. We could not be prouder to have spent the year working alongside our City of St. Louis partners to sustain a park that continues to help sustain our community. With this in mind, here are six magical highlights of 2021. Be safe, and be well. We look forward to seeing you here in Forest Park in 2022!
— Lesley S. Hoffarth, President and Executive Director, Forest Park Forever
1. Places for Happiness
Grown-ups call Forest Park “The Jewel of St. Louis,” but kids know it as “The Playground of St. Louis.” And what a year it was for places to play! Highlighting the year was the opening of the Anne O’C. Albrecht Nature Playscape. The 40,000 perennial plugs, 700 shrubs and 400 trees that Forest Park Forever Horticulturalist Hilary Sears and her team of professional staff and volunteers planted for the Playscape in 2020 were just blooming to life at the June 2 opening. Over the summer, they blossomed across the Playscape’s 17 acres of ADA-accessible boulders, brooks and branches—designed by kids, for kids.
Renovations to the Variety Wonderland Playground, located just outside the Dennis & Judith Jones Visitor and Education Center, provided even more accessibility. Variety, the Children’s Charity of St. Louis, again stepped up with insights and to share in the funding to create new features like the wheelchair-accessible We-Go-Round and improvements to old favorites like the disc swing. The changes mark more than 16 years of fun for kids of all abilities in Forest Park.
And don’t forget, the Park extends south of Highway 40! That is where you will find the new Oakland Playground at the intersection of Tamm and Oakland Avenues. Opened in October, the $300,000 project was funded by generous donations to Forest Park Forever, including a lead grant from the PNC Foundation and the City of St. Louis.
2. Places for Partnership
Since its creation 145 years ago, Forest Park has been a community effort—and its conservancy steward, Forest Park Forever, is no different. Our partnership with the City of St. Louis continued to evolve throughout the year in exciting new ways.
For example, the city is central to our never-ending responsibility to preserve and maintain the 65-acre Kennedy Forest. The forest received a big boost in late 2020 with a $1.5 million, five-year grant from the Mysun Foundation, and our partnership with the city helped us begin to make the most of that generous gift in 2021. While Forest Park Forever’s professional horticulturalists, arborists, wildlife experts and volunteers work to enhance ecosystems and identify strategies to improve the function of the waterways, the city’s resources help to move massive logs and boulders, repair water pumps, maintain grassy areas and more.
Partnerships of different sorts are on display at the Lindell-DeBaliviere entrance to the Park’s north side. Forest Park Forever built on previous work by the Loop Trolley District and Great Rivers Greenway to transform the entrance with 10 trees, 233 shrubs, 2,302 perennials and 3,191 ornamental grasses and sedges. Once again, the city plays an important role—only they have the equipment to mow the curves and angles of this 14,000 square-foot area bordered on all sides by the Park’s grandest entrance.
3. Places for Health & Greenery
Speaking of mind-boggling numbers of plantings, let us not forget one of the Park’s biggest draws—its carefully thought-through ornamental plantings and meticulously maintained trees, shrubs and grasses. Together, those plantings not only please the eye but clean our air and offer cooling shade in the hot St. Louis summers.
Forest Park Forever on-staff experts—in addition to dozens of committed volunteers—planted 579 trees, 41,200 perennials and 60,000 annuals. Their plantings range from the “designed plant community” approach at Lindell-DeBaliviere to the more distinct, formal plants at the Skinker entrance and the perennial matrix strategy at the Hampton Avenue entrance. Their very intentional diversity ensures that plant lovers of all types find even more to love at Forest Park all year long.
4. Places for Hope & Anticipation
Forest Park provides the magic of looking forward and back at the same time. Historic structures and remnants of the Park’s original outlines accentuate today’s history in the making, giving us hope that the future will continue the best of the past.
In yet another example of the fruits of our partnership with the City of St. Louis, Forest Park Forever began soliciting public input for the Steinberg Pavilion and Rink Design Project. With your help, the project will begin the process of transforming the Steinberg Pavilion, the Ice Rink and the surrounding landscape in 2022, allowing you to continue making memories at these cherished sites. You can even share your ideas and your Steinberg stories to help shape the project, or leave your questions with the project hotline at 314-384-5858.
More exciting changes are on deck for the Forest Park East Waterways. This project, now scheduled to break ground in 2022, includes beautifying Jefferson Lake with a new visitor overlook and cascades, improving shoreline access and adding visitor amenities to Bowl Lake and Round Lake and creating a new channel and underground recirculation and stormwater collection systems to fully connect the Park’s river system and reduce water use. Along the way, nearly 500 new trees will establish their roots here.
5. Places for Maintaining What We Love
Conservation and preservation are for the Park’s future. Maintenance allows everyone to enjoy the Park today.
Forest Park Forever staff and our City of St. Louis partners completed several maintenance projects that will ensure both future and present-day enjoyment for years to come. The Cabanne House located on Lindell Boulevard, a 1875 replica of a historic mansion built in 1819 that sits near the intersection of Union Boulevard and Forest Park Parkway, received a new coat of paint, new gutters, new crown molding and a new roof, adding to its stately Victorian beauty.
Meanwhile, across the Park, crews also completed much-needed work to improve water circulation, alleviate erosion issues and improve visitor access to the Cascades. Visitors are already thrilled and grateful. Said one, “The steps and landscaping at the Cascades took my breath away.” Another wrote, “Absolutely beautiful.” Thanks to the generous Forest Park Forever donors who make our maintenance work possible!
6. Places to Come Together…Again!
While being apart through the pandemic has been challenging, Forest Park Forever was able to provide opportunities for us to get together in person again.
The annual Hat Luncheon, a Forest Park Forever sartorial favorite, returned in full-force for its 30th year. Presented by The Women’s Committee of Forest Park Forever and event co-chairs Marsha Mitchell, Executive Director of Allegiance Home Healthcare, LLC., and Suzanne Sitherwood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Spire, the reimagined event offered two distinct experience options for guests. Choosing between a picnic-at-your-pleasure experience at a site of their choosing in the Park or a seated experience at the World’s Fair Pavilion, the smartly dressed luncheon goers raised $350,000, continuing the event’s status as Forest Park Forever’s single largest annual fundraiser.
Two other beloved annual events, the Forest Park Forever Golf Tournament and the I Love Forest Park 5K, together raised more than $76,000 for Forest Park Forever. The Golf Tournament in particular enjoyed a record year for participation, with 49 teams hitting the greens of the Norman K. Probstein Golf Course while raising more than $56,000. The 5K included both virtual and in-person options, giving runners and walkers from age 4 to 80 a safe and fun event.
All of us at Forest Park Forever would like to thank our City of St. Louis partners, our generous donors, volunteers and partners and the entire Forest Park community for coming together during this difficult year. We are grateful to help sustain these 1,300 beautiful acres that bring hope, health and happiness to the community we love!