The Power of Partnerships: A Refreshed Rain Garden and a Best-Ever Block Party

May 22, 2026| Community, Environment

By: Caitlin Doran

The Lake Hopatcong Foundation has a small team of only seven employees, but we are truly lucky to be part of a community that understands the impact of coming out to volunteer, often in large numbers —cough thank-you-100-Block-Party-volunteers cough— to help us foster a vibrant and healthy Lake Hopatcong.

Individuals and families, some from right here at the lake and some from towns away, come out to help us with everything from the Block Party and the Lake Loop to our gala, mailings, field trips, and trails, just to name a few examples. But there’s another kind of volunteerism that has been essential to getting more and more done: partnerships with corporate and service-oriented groups. Two excellent examples of the power of these partnerships are our recent Hopatcong State Park rain garden repair project and Lake Hopatcong Block Party prep!

Hopatcong State Park Rain Garden

Years ago, a rain garden was installed at Hopatcong State Park to absorb stormwater runoff from the parking lot and help prevent it from entering the lake. As an official Friends-of-Hopatcong-State-Park group, we have been stewards of this rain garden for the last five years. Rain gardens are designed to be low-cost, low-maintenance green infrastructure solutions for capturing stormwater runoff; however, they do require refreshing from time to time. Enter the following groups of friends – some new, some old – to help us get the job done!

Mount Arlington-based STORIS, Inc. reached out to us in early April, hoping to partner on an Earth Day activity, and we were so glad to receive their call! Not only did their team of volunteers remove all of the invasive mugwort that had taken over the rain garden, but they also weeded the garden boxes at the state park pavilion and spread 20 tons of topsoil donated by our friends at Saxton Falls Sand & Gravel Co. on everything, making for an excellent rain garden and garden box restart!

Next, our friends at Hopatcong Brownie Girl Scout Troop 98710, with help from moms and dads, planted native plants in the rain garden. Native plants are extremely beneficial to local ecosystems, filtering water, anchoring soil, and providing food for pollinators. While they got their hands dirty, the scouts received a lesson on the importance of native plants and rain gardens from our education and outreach director, Patrick.

Finally, longtime partner FirstEnergy Corp. sent a team of dedicated volunteers to help finish the garden with mulch donated by Tree King, enriching the soil, conserving moisture, and helping suppress future mugwort invasions.

In addition to donating their time and energy, each group also contributed financially to help cover materials and support our ongoing efforts to protect and improve Lake Hopatcong! We are so grateful!

Lake Hopatcong Block Party

The Lake Hopatcong Block Party is our biggest event of the year, engaging hundreds of businesses and groups, and drawing crowds in the thousands. To pull the event off, it takes approximately 100 volunteers, who help with planning, prep, setup, and takedown. In recent years, the addition of volunteer groups has made a measurable difference!

On Friday, aka Block Party Eve, nineteen FirstEnergy employees rejoined us to set up the parking lot. That meant filling buckets, staging tents and trash cans, setting up cones, fencing, and caution tape. It’s hard work, typically done by a dedicated team of Lake Hopatcong Foundation volunteers. The additional help from FirstEnergy meant we had the lot set in record time, before 2 pm, which allowed us to focus on pre-setting large trucks, boats, and displays for the remainder of the day.

Come Block Party day, many more volunteers arrived at the park and offsite parking lots to help. With our largest-ever crowd of 5,000 people, we want to thank all of our volunteers again and again, and shout out the day-of partner groups, coming to our aid with traffic control, food court control, and more: Roxbury Interact Club, Elite Prep Academy students, Hopatcong High School Boys Soccer, and our local first aid and C.E.R.T. organizations!

Are you part of a corporate or service-oriented group or club? We may have opportunities to engage your employees/members in volunteerism in a way that is mutually beneficial! Please reach out to caitlin@lakehopatcongfoundation.org. We will let you know if and how you can make an impact by assisting with various programs, events, and initiatives!