In 1995, Bette Midler launched NYRP to restore neglected spaces in New York. 30 years later, it has planted 200,000+ trees and restored 350+ green spaces for New Yorkers

In 1995, Bette Midler looked at neglected parks in New York City and decided that simply accepting their condition was not an option. What began with the entertainer and a group of volunteers picking up garbage in northern Manhattan eventually became the New York Restoration Project, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring parks, community gardens and other underused green spaces. Three decades later, NYRP has become a major force in urban greening, with an impact that extends across all five boroughs. Its 30-year record includes more than 200,000 trees planted, hundreds of public green spaces built or restored and millions of pounds of trash removed. Today, NYRP describes its mission around the idea that access to nature should be available to every New Yorker.

The story of NYRP began at a time when many New York City parks were suffering from years of neglect, pollution and inadequate investment. Midler, who had returned to the city that helped launch her career, was struck by the deteriorating condition of public spaces. She recruited friends and family to help clear garbage from Fort Tryon Park and Fort Washington Park in northern Manhattan. At Fort Washington Park, more than 100 volunteers joined the cleanup effort in July 1995.

The work was not merely cosmetic: neglected areas contained litter, invasive plants and other debris that made portions of the waterfront difficult to use. NYRP’s early efforts demonstrated how community participation could become the starting point for long-term environmental restoration.


One of the organization’s early challenges was transforming spaces that had effectively become dumping grounds. At Highbridge Park, NYRP crews and volunteers worked with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation to uncover pathways buried beneath accumulated garbage and debris. The cleanup removed abandoned automobiles, thousands of tires and hundreds of tons of trash.

At Sherman Creek Park, the organization helped transform an illegal dumping ground along the Harlem River into Swindler Cove, a five-acre natural area. These projects established a model that would define NYRP for decades: remove the physical signs of neglect, restore ecological functions and create spaces that residents can actually use and enjoy.

NYRP’s work soon expanded beyond individual park cleanups into the preservation and revitalization of community gardens. In 1999, when plans were announced to sell 114 community gardens to developers, NYRP helped raise money to protect these spaces in collaboration with the Trust for Public Land and other nonprofit organizations. The effort helped ensure that the gardens remained public resources.

NYRP now owns and manages 51 community gardens across New York City, where residents can grow food, spend time outdoors, participate in educational programs and build connections with neighbors. These gardens demonstrate that urban green space can serve many purposes at once, combining recreation, food production, environmental education and community life.

Trees became another defining part of NYRP’s environmental mission. In 2007, the organization joined New York City and the Department of Parks & Recreation as a co-leader of MillionTreesNYC, an ambitious campaign designed to plant and care for one million new trees throughout the city.

NYRP focused on distributing free trees to property owners and planting trees with community and corporate volunteers in parks, schoolyards, public housing properties and other public spaces. The millionth tree was planted in the South Bronx in October 2015. NYRP says it has since continued caring for thousands of trees associated with the initiative, many of which have matured into important parts of New York’s urban canopy.

The scale of NYRP’s three-decade transformation is now visible in its official impact figures. Its 2025 annual report says that since its founding, the organization has planted more than 200,000 trees, removed more than 6.1 million pounds of trash and built or renovated more than 300 green spaces. Its current website reports an even broader cumulative figure of more than 350 public green spaces built or restored and more than 280,500 trees planted and distributed.

NYRP also says more than 1.6 million New Yorkers now live within a 10-minute walk of an NYRP green space. Together, these numbers show that the organization’s work has moved far beyond the small volunteer cleanups that launched it in 1995.

The organization’s modern work also connects urban restoration with climate resilience. At Sherman Creek Park, NYRP introduced a living shoreline project that combines native plantings with an artificial oyster reef to help reduce erosion and strengthen wetland habitat. The project reflects a broader understanding of urban green spaces: parks are not simply attractive places for recreation but can also provide ecological functions in a city facing challenges such as heat, flooding, erosion and sea-level rise.

NYRP also operates its Gardens for the City program, which since 2011 has helped build more than 300 gardens and shared green spaces by providing materials, horticultural expertise and labor to community partners.

Thirty years after Bette Midler began picking up trash in a New York park, the New York Restoration Project has developed into an organization whose work reaches deeply into the city’s environmental and community landscape. Its history shows how an apparently modest act—cleaning up a neglected public space—can develop into a sustained movement involving volunteers, residents, gardeners, environmental specialists, government agencies and community organizations.

From restored parks and protected gardens to hundreds of thousands of trees and innovative shoreline projects, NYRP’s three decades offer a vivid example of urban restoration in action. What started in 1995 as a response to neglected green spaces has grown into a continuing effort to make nature more accessible to New Yorkers across all five boroughs.