Clum-Kennedy Park

Clum-Kennedy Park. . , Clum-Kennedy is a one-acre park, with walking paths curving past mature trees, azaleas, lilacs, and boxwood. An arbor near the Frederick Avenue entrance supports a large grape vine that produces tasty grapes in late summer. The property was purchased in 1947 by newspaperman Cornelius Clum's daughters, Helen, Mary, and Bertha. When the Clum sisters were young girls, there were many open fields, farms, and wooded areas in and around Kensington. Over the years, the area became more developed, and the sisters purchased the one-acre property to preserve open space and to create a well-tended garden for all to enjoy. , , The sisters continued to live in the house they grew up in, across from the park, on Kensington Parkway (formerly Prince George's Avenue). Bertha's love of gardening gradually transformed the area from its natural overgrown state into a welcoming garden with a variety of native plants and flowers. , , In 1984, Bertha sold the property to the Town of Kensington with the request that it become a public park and that it be named in honor of her neighbor, Frank Kennedy who helped maintain it. After Bertha's death in 1987, the garden was renamed Clum-Kennedy Park. , , In 2020, the Town received a State Program Open Space Grant to make improvements that included the brick pathway, new pergola, wood bench and bridge and reconfiguration of the gardens. , ,

“The first year, we built a redwood arbor…we dug one of the wild grapes that grew nearby.” -- Bertha Clum