Thanks to a curious family and a determined group of volunteers, Arlington residents can find a peaceful park alongside a busy thoroughfare in the heart of the city.
Converting a former plant nursery into the O.S. Gray Natural Area seems like a logical step, but getting there required a path as winding and extensive as the trails that circle the 20-acre retreat located minutes from downtown Arlington and the expanse of the University of Texas at Arlington.
The city-owned park, 2021 W. Abram St., grew from a query by the young daughter of Arlington residents Kevin and Carrie Donovan, who regularly took their children to roam the site of the former nursery once owned by O.S. Gray.
“Annie asked all the time, ‘when is it going to be a park?’” said Carrie Donovan. “She got tired of asking. We didn’t have any answers.”
Spending time with their family in nature was important to the Donovans, both of whom grew up near wooded areas where as children they could spend free time.
The nursery, which sat at the dead-end of Abram Street, closed in 1982 and the property sat dormant – or as dormant as a vibrant natural area could be – until the mid-1990s.
“By the early 1990s, it was already getting overgrown,” said Kevin Donovan.
At that point, Carrie Donovan called the Arlington Parks and Recreation Department to ask about the possibility of the land becoming a park. She didn’t like the answer: no plans were in place to purchase the land or create a park.
The Donovans were unaware that the parks board at that time – in 1996 – was finalizing a bond package. So when they addressed the parks board with their hopes, board member Lisann Peters thought converting the land into a park was a good idea.
The City Council had to sign off on including the O.S. Gray land in the bond package.
“That’s when we started going around the neighborhood,” with their children in tow, said Kevin Donovan.
As word of the effort got out, the community engaged, said Carrie Donovan.
“People would come to the house, they offered to make logos, they offered to put signs on their lawns,” she said.
“We went viral before that was a thing,” said Kevin Donovan.
The couple tried to gather signatures on petitions and went to every city council meeting, hoping to convince the panel of the value of adding the land purchase to the bond package.
They formed a community group, Neighbors for Norwood, hand-delivered flyers, had representatives at every council meeting and developed what they called “warm chatter.”
Through the activism, they became connected with other groups that benefited the cause, among them the Arlington Conservation Council when noted preservation advocate Julia Burgen, a former city council member, wanted to discuss their vision.
“She was coming out of council with a box, this petite, gray-haired lady who introduced herself,” said Carrie Donovan. “She’s outdoors outside City Hall, spreading maps on the ground, on her hands and knees!”
The efforts paid off as the council included the land in the bond package, leaving the Donovans to realize that hard work still lay ahead: getting voters to approve the bond measure.
At that point, they again canvassed the neighborhood, got news coverage and manned phone banks. But another idea really took off.
“We organized the March For Parks at Howard Moore Park,” said Carrie Donovan.
“We would do this parade, invite everyone involved and get some nice publicity,” said Kevin Donovan, who approached board members of the nonprofit that produces Arlington’s annual Independence Day Parade. Not only did they provide advice and assistance, they recruited Kevin Donovan to the Independence Day Parade board, a post he still holds today.
The parks parade, from a UT-Arlington parking lot to Arlington Downs, took place in January 1997, a week before the bond election – in 14-degree weather. But it worked; the $38 million bond measure passed, by the largest margin of any bond election in Arlington’s history.
Though the city purchased the land in 1998, it sat vacant until 2005, when another bond package came along, allowing the city to develop the first phase of the park, which occurred in 2010.
After the park’s dedication, the nonprofit group Friends of O.S. Gray Natural Area was formed. That organization remains a force to this day, holding board meetings, planning projects and uniting for monthly work days to keep the park inviting to visitors.
Among the projects that volunteers tackle are native vegetation restoration; invasive species eradication; management of the pollinator garden; and maintaining and refreshing the mulch trails. A new focus is restoring and protecting the park’s post oak trees.
The group organizes events that range from star-gazing parties to chalk-the-walk art contests, to plant identification walks to participation annually in the Great Backyard Bird Count. A little library on the site is active, with more than 100 books available over time.
“The thing we’re most proud of is that it wasn’t a reaction to something; it was proactive,” said Kevin Donovan. “We thought it would be a great park.”
