Crocheron & John Golden Park

Crocheron & John Golden Park is the 12th largest park in the borough of Queens, and the 46th largest park in New York City. The park and its tree plantings show the community stewardship that creates public parks. The park is 62 acres and contains over 500 trees. Although Norway maples have come to dominate some areas, NYC Parks, the City of New York, and volunteers of Friends of Crocheron & John Golden Park, are working together to remove these invasive trees and promote planting of native trees.

Some of the notable trees are their 150 year old ginko tree, a Witness Tree to Boss Tweed's great escape, and a sole male amur cork tree that welcomes sledders to the big hill. Notable collections include the osage orange trees that created a natural border between the old estates, a pinetum donated in the 1980s by the John Golden Neighborhood Association, and the Million Trees New York planting site in Crocheron Park. The public park was constructed in phases from 1930 to 1950, thanks to public advocacy and benevolence of John Golden. Largely using New Deal funding under Robert Moses, the park's natural spaces are largely manufactured from a few former lavish estates and smaller cottage homes that dotted the landscape, overlooking the bay and the pond.