New York keeps a large amount of actual forest inside city limits, and City of Forest Day is the one Saturday a year the parks system leans into it. This year it falls on October 3, and the Urban Park Rangers are running free walks and stewardship events in all five boroughs.
Most of them are drop-in. One needs registration.
- Staten Island, 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. — City of Forest Day Hike at High Rock Park, meeting at the Nevada Avenue parking lot. Flora, fauna, and forest ecology in one of the city’s real woodland preserves.
- Bronx, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. — A Great Tree in a Great Forest at Raoul Wallenberg Forest, Independence Ave and W 232nd Street. A restored urban forest, on the ridge above the Hudson.
- Queens, 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. — Forest Restoration Walk in Forest Park, Myrtle Avenue and Park Lane South, with the Forest Park Trust and the Natural Areas Conservancy. Registration required, and it opens Monday, Sept. 21.
- Staten Island, 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. — Park Stewardship at Allison Pond Park, Prospect Avenue and Brentwood Avenue. Actual volunteering: help care for the woodlands.
- Manhattan, 1:00–2:30 p.m. — Great Trees of Inwood Hill Park, W 218th Street and Indian Road. Native tree ID and what trees do for the city.
- Brooklyn, 3:00–4:30 p.m. — Woodland Restoration Walk at the Salt Marsh Nature Center in Marine Park. Coastal woodland restoration, and the species that depend on it.
All six are free, and the spread of times means you can realistically stack two in one day if you are willing to cross a borough in between.
Same afternoon, the Rangers also run the Little Red Lighthouse Festival at Fort Washington Park in Manhattan, noon to 4:00 p.m. — free, and a rare chance to get inside Manhattan’s last remaining lighthouse. That is the easy pairing if you take the Inwood Hill walk at 1:00.