The National Mall is getting a refresh before the weekend -- along with the other national parks.
More than 200 volunteers are cleaning up six national park sites on Friday, clearing debris and building up gardens across the District.
The effort was supposed to close out National Park Week, which runs from April 24 to April 30, but it was rescheduled due to rain. Cleanup began at 10 a.m. on Friday.
Several dozen volunteers from The Pew Charitable Trust are picking up trash along George Washington Parkway. On the National Mall, they're adding mulch, painting and cleaning up the Constitution Gardens near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
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Some of those volunteers could be seen in full waders, climbing into the pond near Constitution Gardens to get litter.
At Wolf Trap National Park in Vienna, volunteers are sprucing up the grounds and amphitheater areas.
"The parks really matter, for everyone in the country," said one volunteer. "We'll do whatever we can to make this the beautiful place that it deserves to be, for everybody in the country who visits here."
National Park Week is part of the National Park Service's mission to preserve and provide cleanup efforts to all the parks in the U.S. The cleanup efforts will continue throughout the rest of the year.
"There's so much for us to take care of, and we have so little staff, that we could not keep the mall looking as good as it does without volunteers," said Mike Litterst, chief of communications for the NPS.
