Pease Park Conservancy works in partnership with the City of Austin to set the standard for world-class park management – emphasizing environmental excellence – to improve and care for this treasured green space for the enjoyment of all.

Our Mission

Pease Park Conservancy celebrates the diverse ecology and history that make Austin’s first public park valuable and unique. The Conservancy works to restore, enhance and maintain this 84-acre public green space for the sustainable use and enjoyment of all.

OUR VISION

Pease Park will be known as an accessible urban green space for all, where land stewardship, environmental innovation and inclusive programming embrace the community's history and inspire its future.

Our Impact in 2024

 
 

What We’ve Achieved

  • Planted more than 4500 trees throughout Pease Park

  • Leveraged more than $15M to enhance this public green space

  • Oversee ~1500 volunteers per year to restore and maintain the park’s ecological well-being

  • Completed the award-winning, unanimously-approved Pease Park Vision Plan in 2014

  • Brought art installations to the park through the Conservancy’s Art in the Park initiatives, including internationally-acclaimed artist Patrick Dougherty’s Stickwork and Malin’s Fountain by Thomas Dambo

  • Added 3 miles of mulch trails that wind through the forested hillside

  • Established Kingsbury Commons as a Monarch Waystation

  • Restored the historic New Deal-era picnic tables, Janet Fish wall, & 1920s Tudor Cottage

  • Managed the spread of ecologically harmful plant species throughout Pease Park

  • Planted hundreds of native plants that will thrive in Central Texas, helping to prevent erosion and supporting the local ecology

  • Created programming around four pillars (Art, Wellness, Learning, Conservation), engaging ~12,000 community members in free programs annually

  • Facilitated Peasecology School field trips with 22 schools

the conservancy’s priorities in pease park

Pease Park Conservancy and the City of Austin have worked closely together to sustain and enhance the 84 acres of Pease Park beginning with the development of the Pease Park Vision Plan in 2014.

In accordance with the first phase of the Vision Plan, the Conservancy fundraised for and invested $10 million in the renovation of Kingsbury Commons, the southernmost 7 acres of the park. Upon completion of that project, Pease Park Conservancy is now responsible for Operations, Maintenance, and Programming within Kingsbury Commons according to the signed Park Operations and Maintenance Agreement (POMA).

Our Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy

Pease Park is emblematic of racial and economic injustice in Austin and presents a unique opportunity to acknowledge our history of slavery, segregation, and exclusion in order to create a public space that is welcoming and accessible to all.

Pease Park Conservancy respects, values, and celebrates our community’s diverse life experiences and heritages and resolves to ensure that all voices-- including historically underrepresented voices-- are valued and heard. We aim to be an inclusive organization with respect to gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexuality and sexual identity, education, and disability.

We are committed to modeling diversity and inclusion for the greenspace nonprofit sector, and to maintaining an inclusive environment with equitable treatment for all.

To promote informed, authentic leadership for cultural equity, Pease Park Conservancy will:

  • View our mission through the lens of equity, diversity, and inclusion to ensure the well-being of our staff and the communities we serve.

  • Acknowledge and dismantle any inequities within our policies, systems, programs, and services, and report organizational progress

  • Explore potential underlying, unquestioned assumptions that interfere with inclusion.

  • Prioritize and support high-level thinking about how systemic inequities impact our organization’s work, and how best to address them in a way that is consistent with our mission.

  • Practice and encourage transparent communication in all interactions.

  • Commit time and resources to expand diversity in leadership within our board, staff, committees, and advisory bodies.

  • Lead with respect above all.

Awards & Recognition

The Kingsbury Commons renovation project was awarded Gold under the Sustainable SITES Initiative rating system.

The Conservancy received a Preservation Austin Merit Award for the rehabilitation of the Tudor Cottage.

Ten Eyck Landscape Architects and Pease Park Conservancy were awarded an Honor Award in recognition of outstanding professional achievement from American Society of Landscape Architects in April of 2022.

Clayton Korte was awarded the 2022 Design Award of Merit by AIA Austin for their work on the Tudor Cottage & Terrace, restroom building, and volunteer hub in Kingsbury Commons.

Mell Lawrence Architects was awarded the 2022 Design Award of Excellence by AIA Austin for his work on the Pease Park Treehouse.

The Pease Park Treehouse was named Best of Austin: Kids & Family Wildcard in The Austin Chronicle in 2022.

Pease Park received the Texas Travel Award at the Statewide level for best park in 2023.

Clayton Korte won an AIA 2023 Small Project Award for their design work at Kingsbury Commons.

In the 2024 Austin Chronicle Best Of Awards, Pease Park won the Reader’s Poll for “Best Playground and Malin’s Fountain won the Critic’s Pick for Sports & Recreation “Best Troll with a Purpose.”

Kingsbury Commons at Pease Park won the Project of the Year Award at the Austin Green Awards in 2024.

Pease Park Conservancy has the Platinum Candid Seal of Transparency through Guidestar. Access the Conservancy’s Guidestar profile here.

Pease Park won The Austin Chronicle’s 2025 Best Of Readers Poll award for best playground!

 

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