Everyone has a favorite garden, park, or natural lands getaway. This is mine.

Sycamore Park in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania on the borderline to Philadelphia is a small community park showcasing one very large, very old Sycamore tree, surrounded by turfgrass and within a perimeter of brick row houses. I grew up near this 300-350 year old American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis). While many parks, gardens, non-profits, and private landscapes struggle with goals, purpose, constraints of maintenance, and reason to be – this park does not.

The park is interwoven into the fabric of the Lansdowne / Upper Darby / Drexel Hill community. The location on a quiet residential street keeps it hidden and isolated from many visitors. Socially, events like birthday parties are held there. There is something ancient and human about a tree symbolized and used as the centerpiece of a park and community. I imagine the Romans and Gauls did the same thing. Native Americans did too, sometimes with nefarious outcomes. For example, the story of the Lenape Indians, William Penn, and the Treaty of Shackamaxon under the majestic Elm at what is now Penn Treaty Park.

Maintenance at Sycamore Park is fairly low. Occasional lawn crews mow the grass where neighborhood kids gather to play football. Old people and locals sit on the wooden bench to watch the surroundings. From a landscape design perspective, Sycamore Park is a statement in subtlety balancing functionality, community engagement, and sense of place. My criteria for a successful landscape is a balance of these elements with also an emphasis on the aesthetic, the functional, and the ecological.

In autumn, Sycamore leaves fall and cover the base of the tree. Local maintenance crews leave the leaves in place as a functional and convenient mulch adding productive biological and fungal properties to the soil.

Attributes of the stately Sycamore include the wonderfully smooth white bark, the oversized maple type leaf, and the hanging spiked seed balls. Old Native American lore says that Native Americans would plant Sycamores along riverbanks and wet areas, marking their locations.