The temperatures may have been less than spring-like, but for the volunteers who bundled up to spend the morning volunteering at Mill River Park, Saturday was still a great day to be outside.

The determined crew of around 100 volunteers met early Saturday morning to get going on their assignments. From there, they broke off into small groups to complete various projects spread out around the park — planting flowers, raking, picking up trash, and maintaining playground equipment

"We're very happy so many people came out this morning," Nia Rhodes Jackson, Director of Programs and Outreach for Mill River Park Collaborative said. "We're much more dispersed than in the past so it's not an obvious crowd in one place, but we had a strong turn-out on such a brisk day."

Girl Scout troop leaders Dianne Houtz and Peggy Erlenkotter stood surrounded by a sea of flowers looking down on the playground area. The two had brought several girls from their troops along to help with the planting. The Girl Scouts have participated in past Earth Day celebrations, planting flowers and doing some staining in the playground area.

"They've been good workers today," Erlenkotter told Patch. "We're just about done here, we've been planting Goldenrod."

Goldenrod is one of the many native species being planted during the beautification of Mill River Park. Service for Peace — the group who have been participating in weekly service projects over the past couple months — was also there with a group of volunteers. Their group was working on removing the invasive species Lesser Celandine in order to make room for native species.

There is only one non-native species that will be found in the park — the cherry trees.

"I know people in Stamford who always talk about missing the cherry trees that were here along the river," Rhodes Jackson said. "We took cuttings from those trees, it's kind of like the trees had babies, so the descendants of those same trees will be back."

The Stamford Tree Foundation has helped to care for the cherry trees, which are expected to be transplanted into the park sometime next year. The cherry trees are currently around seven feet tall and being cared for down the street in a small area that was previously a parking lot.

"It's a pocket of green space that wasn't here before," Rhodes Jackson said. "You'd never know that 12 inches down, it's blacktop."

An unbelievable one-half of Stamford's population lives within one mile of Mill River Park, a space that will soon serve as much-needed open space in the downtown area. Already, Rhodes Jackson is happy to see more mallards in the river and increased diversity of wildlife in the park. The enormous playground at Mill River Park was built by 1500 volunteers in 2006 and is maintained by volunteers coming back year after year.