We had a great week. On Saturday, we pulled double duty — first painting benches with the Civic Joy Fund for the plaza in front of the Bernal Rec Center, then heading over to the future home of Ogden Ave Gardens to paint birdhouses with the neighbors.

Along the way, we met a few new neighbors, caught up with some old friends, and got to spread the word about the green spaces coming to Bernal Heights. Days like this are exactly why we started this newsletter — there’s no shortage of ways to pitch in; you just have to know where to look.

In Case You Missed It

A few months back, we launched SF Weed Whackers — a newsletter built to help local volunteers find green opportunities around the city. Whether you’ve got an hour on a Saturday or want to become a regular at your neighborhood garden, this is the place to find your next workday.

As part of that effort, we also built the Action Hub — an ongoing, always-updated listing of workdays and one-off volunteer activities happening across San Francisco. Bookmark it, check back often, and come dig in with us.

Upcoming: A Night of Mexican Spirits & Wine Tasting

A Fundraiser for Ogden Avenue Gardens

We had so much fun last year; we’re doing it again — premium tequila, smoky mezcal, and the wines of Mexico, poured for a good cause.

Join us for an unforgettable evening celebrating the rich spirits and wines of Mexico. Sip your way through exclusive tastings paired with small bites crafted to complement every pour. Gather with friends, savor the flavors, and raise a glass for something worth growing.

All proceeds benefit Ogden Avenue Gardens — help us grow something beautiful for our community.

📅 Saturday, October 17, 2026 🕕 6:00 – 9:00 PM 📍 Baukunst, 433 Cortland Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110

Get Involved

There are two easy ways to help green spaces like these keep growing:

🙋 Volunteer — Check the Action Hub for upcoming workdays and one-off activities, and show up with your neighbors.

💚 Donate — Support greening projects like Ogden Avenue Gardens directly, or grab a ticket to the fall fundraiser on October 17th.

See you out there. 🐦🪑

The pedestrian-only Ridge Lane sits between Caine and San Miguel streets in San Francisco’s Ingleside neighborhood. It’s technically an unaccepted street, meaning the city never took it over, so for a long time nobody was responsible for it. That was a problem because, for residents of the Caine Avenue cul-de-sac, Ridge Lane was the shortest route to the Balboa Park BART station. Steep, poorly maintained, hard to walk in the dark or the rain. It made an ordinary commute feel risky.

Barbara VanderBorght felt something should be done, but didn’t know who was responsible for the lane. She reached out to Ed Lee about the lane’s condition, back when he was heading DPW — still years away from becoming mayor. He said the City wasn’t responsible, and nothing happened immediately. But a few years later, neighbors Lynn Yuan and Warren Longmire approached the District 11 supervisor, and that was the starting point for a volunteer effort that’s now been going for well over a decade.

From Idea to Green Space

Progress started small. Then Supervisor John Avalos put some discretionary funding toward the lane, and a Community Challenge Grant followed. With that, Ridge Lane Neighbors brought in the Department of Public Works and students from the Academy of Art College’s landscape architecture program to work on the first section of the lane, between Josiah and Lewisburg streets. It was finished in 2013.

That first stretch set the pattern the group has followed ever since: apply for grants, find volunteers and professionals willing to help, build what you can, repeat.

Funding the Vision

The money side of this has never been simple. A $100,000 Community Challenge Grant came in 2017. A much bigger one followed in 2018: $301,000 from the Mayor’s Office of Housing. A smaller $5,000 grant arrived in 2022.

None of it came easy. Prevailing wage rules pushed construction costs up. Grants that required 25% of the funding upfront were hard for a group with no paid staff and no budget cushion. ADA requirements added more steps, and the pandemic further slowed things down. At one point, money held by a partner organization that ran into financial trouble had to be recovered. Mary Beth D’Alonzo worked with the Community Partners Network, whose efforts led to the recoupment of most of the funds.

Where the Project Stands Today

Ridge Lane’s improvements cover five parcels. Two are done: the first section between Josiah and Lewisburg, and the stretch running from Caine to San Miguel, which is probably the most walked section of the whole lane, as it’s an easy walk from there to BART. The rest is a work in progress. One parcel is partway there. Another has been the slowest of all: steep, rocky ground, made worse by construction on the next-door property.

Topophyla, the landscaping firm founded by then-Academy of Art students Nahal Sobahti and Eric Arneson, has led the design work on the project, including the Caine to San Miguel section. You can see photos of that work at topophyla.com/ridge-lane-parcel-4.

What’s Next

Jaxson Pippin, a local Eagle Scout candidate, has a native plant landscaping project planned for one of the unfinished sections. The group is also looking into placing some of the solar light posts already installed along the finished parts of the lane on the unfinished parts, though several have been stolen, which complicates that plan.

There’s a smaller, more practical win too: trash cans were removed from the first parcel after they became a magnet for illegal dumping.

Every month, neighbor volunteers meet for a couple of hours on a Sunday to weed, trim, and do general maintenance. Anyone is invited to join, and you can find information on our website here.

Beyond the physical work, a lot of what’s happened here doesn’t show up in a progress report. Grant cycles stall. Permits take a while. Progress isn’t always visible from month to month. But the people who keep showing up have gotten to know neighbors from other blocks they might never have met otherwise. That’s one thing that’s kept people involved in the project this long — building community is key.

When the new houses at the top of Caine are completed, the group would like to push to develop the section of the lane between Caine and Majestic. Finding funding will be the first big step.\

The People Behind the Project

Nick Lattner, Barbara VanderBorght, and Mary Beth D’Alonzo lead Ridge Lane Neighbors with regular appearances by a cast of neighbors like Maurice Rivers, Bill Rupel, Lynn Yuan, and Joel Winter. Over the years, they’ve had steady help from Danielle and Kristin Casey Callaghan, Moneka Urbansky Muehlbauer, Robert Muehlbauer, Warren Longmire, Scott Kaufman, Patricia Ris, and others.

Join Us for the Bernal Heights Pop-Up Town Square Bench Painting!

Bring your creativity and help add some color to the Bernal Heights Rec Center! We are hosting a community bench painting day to spruce up our neighborhood space, and everyone is invited to take part.

Event Details

• Date & Time: Saturday, September 12 | 9:30 AM – 12:00 PM

• Location: Bernal Heights Rec Center (Moultrie St between Cortland Ave & Jarboe Ave)

• What to Expect: Paint, supplies, coffee, and pastries are all provided. Just bring yourself, your family, and your neighborhood spirit!

Brought to you with love by Civic Joy Fund, San Francisco Recreation & Parks, Greening Projects, and Friends of Bernal Heights Rec Center.

Birdhouse Painting at Ogden Avenue Gardens

Date: September 12, 2026

Time: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Location: Ogden Avenue Gardens

Grab the family and join us at Ogden for a relaxing, creative morning in the garden! We are hosting a community birdhouse painting session designed for kids and the young at heart.

We’ll supply all the wooden birdhouses, brushes, and colorful paints—all you need to bring is your imagination. While the artists get to work, parents can kick back and enjoy a fresh cup of coffee.

Spend a couple of hours connecting with neighbors, enjoying the outdoors, and building a cozy new home for our local feathered friends.

No registration required – drop by and paint with us!

About Ogden Ave Gardens

It is inspiring to see how a neglected stretch of asphalt can be transformed into a vibrant neighborhood asset. Reclaiming an unaccepted street on Ogden Avenue between Folsom and Gates into the future home of Ogden Avenue Gardens is a powerful testament to community-led urban renewal. Bernal Heights will undoubtedly benefit from having another dedicated green space that prioritizes native plantings, pedestrian walkability, and local environmental stewardship.

A COMMUNITY PROJECT BY GREENING PROJECTS – BERNAL HEIGHTS, SAN FRANCISCO

We are neighbors working to transform a neglected, weed-strewn street into a children’s playground, a community gathering place, and a safe, comfortable place to wait for the bus.

The 400 block of Ogden Avenue (between Folsom and Gates) is an “unaccepted street”, meaning the city does not maintain it. It has no sidewalk. Yet it is a much-traveled pathway to the bus stop for local parents walking their toddlers to Ana’s Childcare and for neighbors walking their dogs.

San Francisco Family-Friendly Calendar

Project Highlight: Gateway Community Garden

There’s a stretch of land between Cortland Avenue and Santa Marina Street that most people walk past without a second look. It’s a leftover sliver of public right-of-way, the kind of space cities tend to forget about. That’s about to change.

That overlooked strip is becoming the Gateway Community Garden, and it’s shaping up to be one of the more quietly ambitious projects happening in Bernal Heights this year.

From Forgotten Lot to Neighborhood Anchor

The idea is straightforward enough: take a piece of land nobody’s using and turn it into a place that works. Let the rain soak in instead of rushing straight into the storm drains. Give people a reason to be outside. Along the way, maybe you actually meet the people who live two doors down.

Walk the site today, and you can already see the outline of what’s coming. The garden’s footprint is expanding, with more plots for more households, not just the folks who’ve been on the waitlist for years. A new rain garden at the Cortland Avenue entrance will do double duty, welcoming people into the space while quietly soaking up stormwater before it can carry street pollutants into the sewer system. There’s also room being carved out for workshops, meetups, and the kind of low-key social time that turns “the people who garden near me” into people you actually know, plus a handful of new fruit and nut trees that will keep producing for years to come.

More Than a Place to Grow Food

Not everyone who ends up with a plot here is going to grow vegetables. Some will grow flowers, some herbs, some whatever their grandmother used to plant. That’s part of the point. Gateway isn’t trying to solve food security on its own; it’s trying to be something more durable than that, a small patch of ground that manages stormwater, keeps some green and living soil in a mostly paved corridor, and gives people a reason to be outside with their hands in the dirt, near people they might not otherwise meet. That last part is easy to overlook, but it’s often the thing people end up valuing most.

How to Get Involved

Gateway is still taking shape, and getting it there will take more than planners. If you’ve ever walked past that stretch of Cortland and wondered what it could be, this is your chance to help answer that. Volunteers will be needed for planting days, build days, and ongoing upkeep. Donations, even small ones, help this lot get there faster.

Help Us Grow a Greener, Healthier San Francisco

Have a story, memory, or hope for this space? We’d love to include neighbor voices in a future issue. Reach out and let us know.

Walking the Talk: Karen Rhodes and the Greening of Bernal Heights

A longtime San Francisco resident transforms neighborhood stairways into community gardens while advocating for walkable streets.

At Greening Projects, we’re fortunate to work alongside volunteers who pour real time and care into making San Francisco’s public spaces more beautiful, more accessible, and more alive. Karen Rhodes is one of those people. Her work on the Tompkins Stairway Garden, along with a long list of other efforts, is a reminder that a neighborhood changes when a resident decides to stop waiting for someone else to do it.

When Rhodes retired in 2017 after decades at UC Berkeley, she didn’t slow down. Now 71 and still very much a fixture of Bernal Heights, she’s spent the years since chasing a fairly specific goal: a neighborhood where you’d actually want to walk somewhere.

“After retirement, I decided to focus on getting more involved in San Francisco,” Rhodes says. “I noticed the numerous open spaces in Bernal, particularly the concentration of public stairways, and recognized opportunities for neighborhood beautification and greening.”

From Newcomer to Neighborhood Steward

Rhodes has called Bernal Heights home since 1988, when she landed near Holly Park fresh out of UC Santa Cruz. She’s watched the neighborhood shift and change for close to four decades and put down deep roots of her own in the pocket of streets near Precita Park.

“I’ve never been attached to a neighborhood staying the same,” she says, a useful outlook for someone who’s spent this much of her life watching a place evolve. When she and her husband first moved in, Bernal had a reputation for being a little rough around the edges. That was already starting to shift.

She found her way into neighborhood organizing through a local block club, the kind that puts out a newsletter and tries to get people talking to each other. The Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center was doing similar work supporting Cortland’s small businesses, and up on Bernal Hill, volunteers were running habitat restoration days, pulling out non-native plants and putting native species back where they belonged. None of it made headlines, but it’s the kind of volunteer work that quietly adds up over years.

Cultivating the Tompkins Stairway Garden

Rhodes’s most visible legacy in the neighborhood is the Tompkins Stairway Garden. After connecting with neighbor Vicky Rideout and a handful of others in 2017, she took on the less exciting parts of the job herself: planning, fundraising, grant writing. About two and a half years later, in June 2019, a stairway that most people had stopped noticing reopened as a thriving green space.

It says something about how Rhodes works. She notices a piece of public space nobody’s paying attention to, then spends the next several years making sure enough neighbors care about it for the work to actually get done. Bernal Heights, with its hills and its unusually dense network of public stairways, turned out to have that kind of opportunity around nearly every corner.

Advocating Beyond the Neighborhood

Rhodes’s interest in walkability doesn’t stop at her own block. She sits on the boards of Walk San Francisco and the Bay Area Ridge Trail, pushing for pedestrian safety citywide and helping build out a continuous trail network across the Bay Area. She’s also part of the San Francisco Crosstown Trail team, mapping routes and leading guided walks, including their newest 38-mile Roundabout.

She started out noticing a few empty stairways near her house. Eight years later, boards, trail networks, and a good chunk of the city’s public space have her fingerprints on them.

Know a neighbor doing work like Karen’s? We’d love to feature them. Reach out and tell us their story.

Upcoming Events

Bernal Heights: Tompkins Stairway Garden Work Day

Sep 5: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Bernal Heights Pop-Up Town Square Bench Painting

Sep 12: 9:30 am - 12:00 pm

Birdhouse Painting at Ogden Avenue Gardens

Sep 12: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

View Calendar

For years, the blacktop in front of the Bernal Heights Rec Center has been a stretch of asphalt where kids learn how to bike and roller skate, and neighbors gather. Its contained, car-free layout has long made it a go-to spot for parents of young children and nannies, who like having a safe place for little ones still getting the hang of two wheels. That part isn’t going away. What’s new is layered on top: planters, young trees, seating, and a nature play area built from fallen logs, none of it displacing what was already there.

The bigger goal, discussed on a recent episode of Bernal Connect with hosts Mike and Tracy, is a real “Town Square” for the neighborhood, somewhere people linger rather than just pass through. Greening Projects is leading the project, working alongside SF Rec and Park and Civic Joy Fund.

From Asphalt to Oasis, One Living Pilot at a Time

The team isn’t presenting neighbors with a conceptual master plan and asking for reactions to a drawing. They’re putting real, low-cost elements in the ground now, so people can experience the changes firsthand and weigh in before anything becomes permanent. Planters and young trees provide shade, tables and seating anchor a social area, and a nature exploration zone gives kids somewhere to climb. Civic Joy Fund has also funded on-site music and art events, an easy way to draw people in and hear what they think.

The Part That Doesn’t Show Up in the Press Release

There’s a tradeoff nobody advertises: the city will let a nonprofit install a pop-up green space on public property, but it won’t water it. That job falls to whoever holds the permit, which in practice means someone has to show up regularly for weeding, watering, and the occasional battle with gravel that’s migrated somewhere it shouldn’t be.

The project’s answer is a volunteer steward program, and sign-ups for weekly watering shifts are now open.

Sign up for a weekly watering shift →

Beyond the Plaza: Community Corners

A similar pattern is emerging elsewhere in the neighborhood: a nonprofit, a city agency, and a local business, each taking on one piece. SFMTA’s new pilot, Community Corners, places planters inside painted street safety zones, starting near the library on Cortland. A similar setup near Moultrie is being watered by The Barb Shop, a local business that volunteered to keep it alive.

What’s Coming Next

Upcoming Events

Community Meeting: Garden & Art

Aug 29 - 10:00 am - 11:30 am

Holladay Street Clean Up Day

Aug 29 - 11:00 am - 2:00 pm

Green Density Walking Tour

Aug 30 - 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Bernal Heights: Tompkins Stairway Garden Work Day

Sept 5 - 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Get Involved: Friends of Bernal Rec

Friends of Bernal Rec - Become part of a passionate group of neighbors committed to making our recreation center thrive. As a Friend of Bernal Rec, you’ll connect with fellow community members, participate in park improvements, and have a direct voice in shaping the spaces where our neighborhood gathers and plays.

Partner Profile: Ariel Vaughn, Civic Joy Fund

Ariel Vaughn of Civic Joy Fund is one of the people tying this whole effort together, funding the connective work between city agencies, nonprofits, and local businesses across the plaza, Community Corners, and the events that bring people out to see it.

On Bernal Connect, Vaughn explained the reasoning behind the approach: rather than asking neighbors to react to a conceptual drawing, Civic Joy Fund and its partners install real elements first, so residents can experience the changes and give feedback before anything is locked in. It’s part of why the fund has put money behind on-site music and art events too. They get people onto the plaza, and the feedback follows almost on its own.

Vaughn didn’t shy away from the catch that comes with this approach. Cities will approve a green space on public land, but they don’t maintain it, so the watering, weeding, and general upkeep fall to someone else. Civic Joy Fund’s volunteer steward program exists to close that gap, whether it’s a neighbor picking up a weekly watering shift at the Rec Center plaza or a business like The Barb Shop adopting a planter near Moultrie.

The model runs on small, distributed commitments rather than one big institutional fix: a nonprofit funds the spark, a city agency provides the space, and a business or neighbor keeps it alive day-to-day. As Vaughn put it, the real story isn’t the planters. It’s the people willing to show up with a watering can.

Connect: Civic Joy Fund

Ready to help? Sign up for a weekly watering shift or mark your calendar for the September 12 bench painting event at the Rec Center plaza.

There’s a strip of green at the top of Potrero Hill that most people drive past without a second thought — and that’s kind of the point. The Carolina Green Space didn’t start with a big plan or a grant application. It started with a few neighbors who grew tired of driving past an overgrown median and decided to take matters into their own hands.

This week, we’re taking a closer look at that story: how a forgotten patch of city land became one of the largest green spaces in San Francisco, one weekend at a time. It’s a good reminder that you don’t need a title, a budget, or a background in landscaping to change what your block looks like — just a willingness to show up.

Below that, you’ll find our full calendar of upcoming events and workdays, including a few chances to get your hands dirty. Come for an hour, come for the whole morning — every bit of help moves these projects forward.

Project Spotlight: Carolina Green Space

Drive up Carolina Street between 22nd and 23rd, at the top of Potrero Hill, and you’ll pass one of the largest vegetated islands in San Francisco — a 960-foot median that’s since grown into a real gathering space for neighbors. It’s easy to miss, honestly, just a strip of green splitting the road in half. But go back a few years, and there wasn’t much reason to notice it at all.

The City used to maintain the median. That ended after the 2008 financial crisis, and the space fell into neglect — overgrown, littered with trash, home to occasional encampments and safety concerns. It’s a familiar pattern in San Francisco and in most cities: public land gets planted with good intentions, and then the resources that kept it going quietly move elsewhere. No one decides to let a space go. It just happens, season after season, until people stop thinking of it as green space at all.

Carolina Street took a different turn — largely because one neighbor decided it should.

Cathryn Blum lives directly beside the median, and she’d watched it decline for years before she and a handful of Potrero Hill neighbors decided to act. In late 2016, they started showing up on weekends with gloves and garden tools, pulling weeds and hauling away debris, testing what could actually hold up against wind, foot traffic, and the hill’s particular weather. Most had no landscaping background. What they had was time on Saturdays and a refusal to keep driving past the same eyesore.

Cathryn led the push to connect the group with the right city channels and landscape architects, work that paid off with a Community Challenge Grant. By 2022, the group had transformed the space into “Skyline Terrace” — now a favorite spot where neighbors walk their dogs, families gather, and passersby stop to take in the view. Greening Projects came on board around that time and has stuck with the project since, helping keep the momentum going.

Today, Cathryn continues to lead the volunteer effort, with future plans for a southern “Sunset Terrace” and new gathering spaces. Her advice to others taking on similar projects: be patient, persistent, and flexible — and try to make it a fun, creative, rewarding process for everyone involved.

Carolina Street isn’t the only median in San Francisco that’s fallen into this cycle — cared for, then forgotten, then remembered by someone willing to do something about it. Chances are your neighborhood has its own version: an overgrown lot, a bare traffic island, a corner nobody claims anymore.

If that sounds familiar, consider this the nudge to grab some gloves and a couple of neighbors and get started. And if you’re not sure where to begin, we can help.

You can read Cathryn’s full story here: Greening Potrero Hill: The Carolina Green Space Story

Upcoming Events

🌱 Community Meeting: Garden & Art

Join us for a Community Meeting focused on Garden + Art! Come get an update on all the exciting projects happening at the Good Prospect Community Garden.

• When: Saturday, August 29, 2026 · 10:00–11:30 AM

• Where: Baukunst, 433 Cortland

• Perks: Light refreshments will be served!

• RSVP: Email bernalbeautiful@gmail.com to save your spot

We look forward to seeing you there and sharing ideas for our community space.

🚶 The Green Density Tour Returns — August 30

Join the Action Network for our popular Green Density Walking Tour on Sunday, August 30, from 3–5 PM. Co-hosted by the Sierra Club’s SF Bay Chapter and Greening Projects, this walk explores Bernal Heights’ ecology — from its hidden hydrological features to the unique geology that shapes how we experience the neighborhood. Along the way, we’ll discuss opportunities to further green the area and create a safer, more welcoming environment for pedestrians and new neighbors.

As always, we’ll stick around afterward for optional drinks, snacks, and conversation.

RSVP soon — this tour always fills up!

About Greening Projects

Greening Projects empowers communities to transform urban landscapes into vibrant, sustainable environments where people and nature thrive together. We partner with community groups and individuals who envision greener neighborhoods and cities, offering expert consulting in planning, design, development, and project management. Through collaborative engagement and professional guidance, we help turn environmental aspirations into tangible green spaces that strengthen community bonds, enhance ecological health, and create lasting positive change in the urban fabric.

Upcoming Events

August Ridge Lane Workday

Aug 23 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Community Meeting: Garden & Art

Aug 29 10:00 am - 11:30 am

Holladay Street Clean Up Day

Aug 29 11:00 am - 2:00 pm

Green Density Walking Tour

Aug 30 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Bernal Heights: Tompkins Stairway Garden Work Day

Sep 5 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Birdhouse Painting at Ogden Avenue Gardens

Sep 12 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Steering Committee Member & Volunteer, Tompkins Stairway Garden

When Vicky Rideout moved to Bernal Heights, she noticed something troubling right away: a neglected staircase that had become a real concern for her new neighbors. Instead of chalking it up to city life, she dug in. What she found was a classic bureaucratic gap — the city owned the property but claimed no responsibility for maintaining it. The staircase had fallen through the cracks, literally and figuratively.

Vicky saw an opportunity where others saw only frustration. She contacted the mayor’s office, researched who actually owned the land, and started organizing her neighbors. Progress wasn’t instant, but she kept at it, turning informal front-porch conversations into real meetings with neighbors and city officials alike. Eventually, Vicky and a committed group of neighbors formed a street park and took on the staircase’s upkeep themselves, securing support for supplies and trash removal from city agencies along the way — a model of community stewardship built to last.

The results exceeded even Vicky’s hopes. A modest cleanup grew into a full neighborhood improvement project, backed by grants and sustained by volunteers. The once-troubled space is now a community asset — safer, greener, and full of neighborhood spirit. Today, residents use the stairway daily, and it’s become a true gathering point for the community.

“Greening Projects helped us plan and execute the first fundraising campaign for the Tompkins Stairs, and it was a huge success. They generated a lot of community support and involvement!” — Vicky Rideout, Tompkins Stairway Garden

More Than Just Soil: Finding My People in the Garden

We talk a lot about greening infrastructure and the technical side of what we do, but the real secret behind our community projects is something far more organic. When we set out to build gardens, we’re really building a support network.

The work can feel solitary at times, but I’ve learned I’m never truly alone in this mission. My trips across the city to visit our various sites have become the highlight of my week — proof that this garden-steward life comes with some pretty incredible built-in mentorship.

Learn More

Upcoming Events

🌱 Community Meeting: Garden & Art

Join us for a Community Meeting focused on Garden + Art! Come get an update on all the exciting projects happening at the Good Prospect Community Garden.

• When: Saturday, August 29, 2026 · 10:00–11:30 AM

• Where: Baukunst, 433 Cortland

• Perks: Light refreshments will be served!

• RSVP: Email bernalbeautiful@gmail.com to save your spot

We look forward to seeing you there and sharing ideas for our community space.

🚶 The Green Density Tour Returns — August 30

Join the Action Network for our popular Green Density Walking Tour on Sunday, August 30, from 3–5 PM. Co-hosted by the Sierra Club’s SF Bay Chapter and Greening Projects, this walk explores Bernal Heights’ ecology — from its hidden hydrological features to the unique geology that shapes how we experience the neighborhood. Along the way, we’ll discuss opportunities to further green the area and create a safer, more welcoming environment for pedestrians and new neighbors.

As always, we’ll stick around afterward for optional drinks, snacks, and conversation.

RSVP soon — this tour always fills up!

About Greening Projects

Greening Projects empowers communities to transform urban landscapes into vibrant, sustainable environments where people and nature thrive together. We partner with community groups and individuals who envision greener neighborhoods and cities, offering expert consulting in planning, design, development, and project management. Through collaborative engagement and professional guidance, we help turn environmental aspirations into tangible green spaces that strengthen community bonds, enhance ecological health, and create lasting positive change in the urban fabric.

Upcoming Events

Aug 29 10:00 am - 11:30 am

Community Meeting: Garden & Art

Aug 29 11:00 am - 2:00 pm

Holladay Street Clean Up Day

Aug 30 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Green Density Walking Tour

Sep 5 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Bernal Heights: Tompkins Stairway Garden Work Day

Sep 12 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Birdhouse Painting at Ogden Avenue Gardens

“To leave the world better than you found it is the legacy of one who cares for the Earth.” — Anonymous

Project Spotlight

Bernal Wild is a volunteer-led habitat restoration collective working on the slopes of Bernal Hill in San Francisco. Since 2021, the group has focused on removing invasive plants, Scotch broom, oxalis, Pride of Madeira, and re-establishing locally appropriate native species, including lupines, clarkia, buckwheats, native grasses, sages, ceanothus, toyon, and oaks.

By replacing dense monocultures of invasives with diverse native plantings, Bernal Wild is creating habitat that supports pollinators, birds, and other wildlife while reducing fire risk and soil erosion. Their work shows how a small, committed group of neighbors can transform neglected urban land into a thriving, insect-rich landscape — and offers a model for community-driven pollinator restoration wherever you live.

Projects like Bernal Wild run entirely on volunteer hours and community support. If their work speaks to you, there’s always room for one more set of hands — or a contribution that helps keep the native plants coming.

Volunteer Profile

When Emma Dolan moved to San Francisco in 2023, she brought with her something the city’s dense, paved neighborhoods seemed poorly equipped to accommodate: a desire to grow things. A scientist at UCSF, she was accustomed to patience and the long view. What she wasn’t prepared for was being told, politely but firmly, that her idea was probably too ambitious, too expensive, and too complicated to pursue.

She pursued it anyway — and she wouldn’t be doing it alone for long.

Within a year, Emma helped launch one of the city’s newest community gardens at Kimbell Field. What began as one person’s instinct has since grown into a collective effort, drawing scores of volunteers, securing grant funding, and giving rise to a new neighborhood organization dedicated to the garden’s long-term stewardship.

Read Emma’s story: Kimbell Community Garden

Stories like Emma’s usually start the same way: someone decides to show up. If you’ve been looking for a sign to get involved in a project near you, this is it.

Upcoming Event: Birdhouse Painting at Ogden Avenue Gardens

Date: September 12, 2026 Time: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Location: Ogden Avenue Gardens

Grab the family and join us at Ogden for a relaxing, creative morning in the garden! We’re hosting a community birdhouse painting session designed for kids and the young at heart.

We’ll supply all the wooden birdhouses, brushes, and colorful paints — all you need to bring is your imagination. While the artists get to work, parents can kick back and enjoy a fresh cup of coffee.

Spend a couple of hours connecting with neighbors, enjoying the outdoors, and building a cozy new home for our local feathered friends.

No registration required – drop by and paint with us!

Help Us Grow a Greener, Healthier San Francisco

Across San Francisco, something remarkable is happening. Communities are transforming empty lots, concrete corridors, and bare sidewalks into vibrant green spaces — and the benefits are extraordinary.

These aren’t just beautification projects. They’re solutions to some of our city’s most pressing challenges, including food insecurity, flooding, and air pollution.

Green infrastructure projects deliver immediate benefits while building long-term resilience. They address multiple challenges at once. They bring people together. And with your support, we can do so much more.

Join us in building a greener, more resilient San Francisco.

DONATE NOW →

San Francisco is full of quiet transformations — a fenced-off lot turned into a pollinator habitat, a stretch of concrete turned into a community garden, a hillside once choked with invasives turned into a home for native lupine and sage. Most of these changes are led by neighbors, not agencies. Greening Projects exists to tell their stories.

You’ve probably walked past one of these places without knowing its history. A garden bed that used to be a dirt lot. A hillside trail lined with native grasses that used to be Scotch broom as far as you could see. Someone — usually a small group of someones, working weekends, learning as they went — decided that patch of the city deserved better, and then did the slow, unglamorous work of making it happen.

That work rarely gets much attention. It doesn’t come with ribbon-cuttings or press releases. It happens in gloves and old sneakers, one Saturday morning at a time. This newsletter is our attempt to change that — to give San Francisco’s grassroots green spaces the visibility they’ve earned.

What you’ll find here

Each issue brings you:

• Project Spotlights — a close look at the restoration efforts, gardens, and green infrastructure taking root across the city, and the ecological difference they’re making.

• Volunteer Profiles — the people behind the plants: why they started, what they’ve built, and what it took.

• Upcoming Events — hands-on ways to get outside, meet neighbors, and pitch in, from planting days to birdhouse painting.

• Ways to Help — because every garden on this list runs on volunteer hours and community support, and there’s almost always room for one more person.

Why we started this

We started this newsletter on a simple belief: San Francisco’s green spaces aren’t just nice to look at. They’re solutions — to food insecurity, flooding, air pollution, and the quiet loss of habitat that comes with city living. A pollinator garden isn’t just pretty; it’s an ecosystem doing real work. A community garden isn’t just a nice place to sit; for some neighbors, it’s where dinner comes from.

And nearly all of it is built by ordinary people who decided to show up. Not developers, not city agencies — neighbors with a shovel and an idea nobody asked them to have. That’s the part of the story we think deserves telling.

Join us

If that sounds like your kind of thing, subscribe below. We’ll bring you a new project, a new volunteer story, and a new way to get involved every issue.

And if you’re ever moved to volunteer or donate to the projects we cover, we’ll always tell you how.