Earth Day volunteers create poetry rocks for Nashville park
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Earth Day is a time when members of the community take the opportunity to give back to green spaces. Two groups of volunteers went to Shelby Park to donate time and energy to clean and create a new experience at the park.
Southwest Airlines came to fold new Shelby Park brochures and create poetry rocks for the Nature Play. The Nature Play area is on Shelby Bottom’s Nature Center campus and gives kids a place to get creative with play and experience nature in a more unstructured play environment.
Volunteers on Monday were making poetry rocks which will be added to the Nature Play area said C.D. Paddock.
📧 Have breaking come to you: Subscribe to News 2 email alerts →
“We are going to be having these set up over there so kiddos can make poetry together. And we have pictures and words, and they will get to put them together like those magnetic poetry,” said Paddock. “At Centennial’s Earth Day celebration, we had kiddos write words on a marker board of things that they like to do outside and things they did with their families and their favorite parts of nature so we are taking those ideas and just directly putting them on rocks so that kids will be able to come back and see their poetry in real life.”
There will be a pop-up of Nature Play on May 3 and 10 from 3-8 PM if you want to come create your own poetry rock. To find other upcoming events and volunteer opportunities click here.
The Cumberland River Compact led clean-up efforts for tributaries in Shelby Park. They are a non-profit dedicated to keeping the Cumberland River and its tributaries healthy and clean. They facilitated a litter clean-up with UBS, which happens annually, to clean up waterways at Shelby Park and grab other garbage on the grounds.
Anna Lepetri said the clean-up is important to help protect a number of species. “To keep our city beautiful and to keep trash largely out of our waterways as over three million people rely on the Cumberland River for clean water and all this trash would end up in the Cumberland so we’re trying to protect it for us and for the hundreds of thousands of species that are here.”
Last year 14,000 pounds of trash were cleaned up from volunteer efforts in partnership with the Cumberland River Compact and they are on track to exceed that number this year. The non-profit works with Metro Nashville, Gallatin, and Hendersonville to ensure healthy waterways across Middle Tennessee.
⏩ Read today’s top stories on wkrn.com
There are volunteer opportunities across the mid-state and the closest one is Thursday in Clarksville. This weekend they are in Clarksville doing prairie restoration. The prairies are used to help absorb stormwater that could be polluted before it enters other waterways.
This summer they are doing a kayak clean-up that starts at Shelby Park. To learn about all the Cumberland River Compact volunteer opportunities, click here.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRN News 2.
