Sonny Bono Park Rehabilitation Project

Located across the street from the Heurich House Museum, the 800-square-foot Sonny Bono Memorial Park was dedicated to artist Sonny Bono in 2005. Over the years, the park was neglected and plants were not cared for; now the park needs rehabilitation to become an appealing and accessible part of our neighborhood again.

The Heurich House Museum has adopted park through the DC Department of Parks and Recreation's Park Partners Program, and is now seeking community support to help revitalize the space. Our goal is to plant a low maintenance garden with beautiful year-round color that will enhance the space, provide visual appeal, welcome visitors, and create a more welcoming park for this part of Dupont Circle.

We hope to use our ioby project to engage local residents in the immediate vicinity of the park to volunteer or donate funds to the project. Funds raised through ioby would be used to remove the current soil and dead plants, and to help pay for the planting of low maintenance, full-sun plants.

The museum seeks $3000 in donations for community stakeholders to assist with purchasing and planting new plants for the community park. In addition, we hope to recruit a group of committed volunteers who will help implement the project later this fall when funding has been secured and the climate is more amenable to planting new landscaping. 

Sonny Bono Park is located across the street from the Heurich House Museum. For years, the museum has witnessed the park fall into disrepair, and has either invested its own resources into cleaning the park or arranged with neighborhood organizations to maintain it. In 2014 the museum made the decision to adopt the park so that it would have the legal authority to conduct much needed fundraising and renovations. The Heurich House Museum now has a cooperative agreement with the DC Department of Parks & Recreation, making it Sonny Bono Park's "Park Partner". 

The goal of our ioby campaign is to create community awareness about the park as a resource and help the community take an ownership interest in their neighborhood space.  Our ioby campaign asks the community to invest in their neighborhood with monetary donations and with volunteer time to help implement the master garden plan for the park. We have already received support from local community blogs and civic associations that are interested in helping, and we hope to capitalize on this publicity and swell of community support in our campaign.