“Northeastern, being our most important neighbor, stepped in and helped us tremendously,” says Franco Campanello, president of the SouthWest Corridor Park Conservancy.
It was a matter of duty for Zachary Yelland, a second-year Northeastern University graduate student.
A resident of Boston, Yelland loves to walk around and explore the city. It was only natural for him to sign up to participate in the annual spring cleanup Northeastern tackles every year in partnership with Boston’s Love Your Block Initiative.
“It is the city that we live in, and I do think there is some onus that if you live in the city, to take care of the city,” said Yelland on Saturday while raking out wet leaves that had collected under the gate railings leading to the entrance of the Southwest Corridor Park on West Newton Street.
The goal of the cleanup was to help spruce up Northeastern’s neighboring communities — Fort Hill, Mission Hill, Roxbury, Fenway, South End and Back Bay — as part of a collaborative effort among Northeastern’s various off-campus engagements departments.
The groups, which were composed of dozens of Northeastern students, cleaned up the following locations this weekend — the Southwest Corridor Park, the Mission Hill Community Garden, The Fens near Kelleher Rose Garden, Wellington Green, the Fenway Victory Gardens and Hawthorne Youth and Community Center.
While the annual spring cleanup has taken on various iterations over the years, the one constant has been the coordinated effort among Northeastern, its students and the community, said John Tobin, Northeastern University vice president of city and community engagement.
“When you have all three working together for the common good, it doesn’t just make for a better product but for better relationships,” Tobin added.
Indeed. Northeastern has been an important partner in the revitalization of the SouthWest Corridor Park, explained Franco Campanello, president of the SouthWest Corridor Park Conservancy.
Eighteen years after the park opened, it had fallen into “complete decrepitude,” he said. When Campanello became president, he turned to neighboring organizations for support.
“Northeastern, being our most important neighbor, stepped in and helped us tremendously,” he said.
It was on Northeastern’s suggestion that the Southwest Corridor Park was classified as an arboretum, a type of botanical garden dedicated to conservation of trees, explained Campanello. Arboretums are sometimes called “outdoor living tree museums” and are granted certain protections and regulations.
Additionally, every year Northeastern students volunteer to help keep the park clean and well-maintained, he said.
The same could be said of the Wellington Green garden, which is located at 561 Columbus Ave., explained Carey Erdman, a member of the Claremont Neighborhood Association and one of the main stewards of the gardens.
“Northeastern does help out and try to involve themselves within the community they are situated in,” Erdman said, minutes before a group of students arrived to help pick up dead leaves and put down fresh compost.
This is the third year Jordan Gonzales-Goss, a fourth-year Northeastern student, has participated in the cleanup. One of her favorite parts of the cleanup is getting to meet the residents who live in the area.
“Being on campus can make you feel like you are in a Northeastern bubble,” she said. “Being able to broaden your horizon and go off campus to talk to those residents really does help broaden your view.”
At the Fenway Victory Garden, Sai Boddupalli, president of Fenway Garden Society Inc., directed Northeastern students on cleanup efforts to get the gardens ready for the spring season.
“Over the winter we see a lot of folks utilize the gardens for both shelter and listed activities,” he said. “We’re just getting back into the garden and doing some cleanup.”
Northeastern has been a strong partner for the Fenway Garden Society for years, Boddupalli added, highlighting that the two partnered on the launch of the organization’s Accessible Garden in the late 1990s.
Charlie Harrison, a second-year Northeastern student, was assisting in clearing pathways to make the Fenway gardens more easily accessible. It was his first time there, and although it was a little rainy and cold, he was in good spirits and was glad to be giving back.
“The university has a lot of different effects on the city and the communities surrounding us so I think it’s important for us to be active in the larger Boston community,” he said.