Palmer Square Park's Arboretum Legacy Inspires a Citywide Movement: Clark Park Is Now Chicago's Second Accredited Arboretum
By Socialhood News · Palmer Square ·
Palmer Square Park didn't just earn a rare distinction last year — it started something. On October 26, 2026, Block Club Chicago reported that Richard Clark Park in Irving Park has become the Chicago Park District's second official Level 1 Arboretum, accredited by the ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program under the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois. The milestone makes Palmer Square Park, at 2200 N. Kedzie Ave., the acknowledged trailblazer of what is now quietly becoming a citywide urban forestry movement.
The Clark Park Advisory Council announced this month that the park at 3400 N. Rockwell St. had received its Level 1 Arboretum designation — the same accreditation Palmer Square Park earned in September 2025, making it the first Chicago Park District location ever to receive that honor through ArbNet. With 22.42 acres of green space, Clark Park is now the second park in the city to hold that status, and it is not alone in the pipeline: Cathy Breitenbach, director of cultural and natural resources for the Chicago Park District, confirmed that a few other parks are actively working toward accreditation as well.
The ArbNet program defines an arboretum as a living museum of trees and other woody plants, cared for by an organization committed to enhancing the public's understanding of trees. To earn Level 1 status, a park must demonstrate a documented tree collection and a commitment to public education. Palmer Square Park's accreditation last year — recognizing nearly 30 tree varieties across its 7.69 acres, including a historic Elm Grove and more than 50 hybrid elms originally provided by noted dendrologist Dr. George Ware of the Morton Arboretum — set the template that Clark Park and others are now following.
The Park District has worked directly with the Morton Arboretum to develop a process that helps parks apply for arboretum status, Breitenbach said, a formal pipeline that did not exist before Palmer Square's groundbreaking designation. In other words, the decades of grassroots tree stewardship along Kedzie Boulevard didn't just protect a neighborhood park — they helped build the institutional framework for Chicago to grow its urban forest recognition citywide.
For Palmer Square neighbors, the news carries a particular kind of pride. The neighborhood's long volunteer tradition — from the Palmer Square Park Council's stewardship of the elm canopy to Openlands' TreeKeeper program that trains residents in urban forestry — is now being recognized not just as a local achievement, but as a model worth replicating across Chicago. Jeff Daube, a volunteer coordinator for the Clark Park Advisory Council who spearheaded that park's arboretum application, said he hopes the designation will bring more resources and visibility to Clark Park's tree collection — an aspiration that Palmer Square neighbors will recognize immediately from their own experience.
Clark Park's history adds another dimension to the story. Its soccer fields and bike trails sit on land formerly occupied by the Riverview Amusement Park, which closed in 1967 and was once billed as the world's largest. That a former amusement park site is now an accredited arboretum — a living museum of trees — is the kind of Chicago transformation story that writes itself. Palmer Square's own history, as a boulevard park designed in the City Beautiful tradition and later stewarded back to health by its neighbors, rhymes with that arc in the best possible way.
For residents who want to see Palmer Square's arboretum legacy up close, the park remains one of the Northwest Side's most rewarding places to spend an afternoon. The Morton Arboretum's ArbNet program lists Palmer Square Park's full tree collection online, and Openlands' TreeKeeper volunteers continue to offer public programming at the park through the fall season. As more Chicago parks move toward accreditation, this neighborhood can rightly say it showed the rest of the city how it's done.
Sources:
1. https://blockclubchicago.org/2026/10/26/clark-park-named-citys-2nd-arboretum-after-palmer-square-park/
2. https://capitolfax.com/2026/10/27/isabel%E2%80%99s-afternoon-roundup-623/