Remembrance
Hold stories, sacrifice, grief, gratitude, and public memory in a place people can return to.
A Place-Based Platform
EPIC Gardens Is Not a Beautification Project
Beauty matters, but the flowers are not the whole point. EPIC Gardens explores how gardens and connected public spaces can become infrastructure for relationships, memory, stewardship, learning, gathering, creativity, and neighborhood pride.
York XL began with the Ivan & Zach Firefighters Memorial Gardens and the Broad Street Greenway as the first canvas for a much larger gardenscape. The most important result has been what people can do together around the place.
The Ecosystem
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Several Kinds of Community Life Can Share the Same Ground
Stewardship
Create recurring opportunities for neighbors, volunteers, students, and partners to care for a shared place.
Learning
Use plants, signs, stories, public art, multilingual elements, and hands-on activity as neighborhood learning tools.
Gathering
Make room for StreetMeets, markets, seasonal events, youth activities, remembrance, and informal connection.
Placemaking
Help people walk with purpose, notice what is around them, and experience the Greenway as a connected destination.
Neighborhood Pride
Make care visible and give residents and visitors another reason to value York City neighborhoods.
The First Permanent Anchor
Ivan & Zach Firefighters Memorial Gardens
The completed memorial honors York City firefighters Ivan Flanscha and Zachary Anthony. Families, firefighters, neighbors, businesses, volunteers, and public partners helped turn remembrance into a permanent community asset.
Read the Ivan & Zach StoryMemory Made Visible
The memorial gives service, sacrifice, loss, and gratitude a lasting place within the life of the city.
A Standard for Care
Its dignity, maintenance, storytelling, and long-term stewardship should guide everything built around it.
A Beginning, Not the Whole
The memorial demonstrated what one carefully created place can make possible along the Greenway.
Activation Matters
A Garden Becomes an Ecosystem When People Use It
EPIC Gardens connects physical space with reasons to return. Programming can be formal or informal, large or small, seasonal or recurring.
StreetMeets
EPIC Markets
Winter Wonderland
Remembrance events
Youth activities
Informal gathering
Past activities demonstrate what is possible; they should not be read as a currently published event schedule.
Stewardship Is Part of the Design
Seasonal Care
Volunteer Stewardship
Story Protection
Long-Term Support
The Work Continues After the Ribbon Is Cut
Living public spaces require recurring attention. Maintenance, volunteer coordination, storytelling, programming, tools, replacement plantings, and long-term financial planning are part of the project—not afterthoughts.
Planting, weeding, pruning, watering, cleanup, replacement, and preparation for changing weather.
Useful, organized opportunities for community members, students, groups, and partners to contribute.
Care for the memorial’s meaning, interpretive elements, donor relationships, and public understanding.
Build dependable funding and systems so care does not rely only on occasional bursts of energy.
What Comes Next
Protect What Exists Before Expanding the Vision
EPIC Gardens still has a larger Broad Street gardenscape vision, but most of that ecosystem remains conceptual. The immediate priority is responsible stewardship of the Ivan & Zach Memorial and careful design of any next phase.
Near-Term Priorities
- Ongoing memorial and garden care
- Stronger storytelling and interpretation
- Volunteer and stewardship systems
- Thoughtful community activation
- Long-term maintenance planning
Future Possibilities
- A connected Broad Street learning corridor
- Additional garden and placemaking elements
- Multilingual learning and public art
- Improved visitor experience and wayfinding
- Expansion only when permission, funding, stewardship, and capacity align
Explore the Details
Open the Parts You Want to Understand
Does York XL own the memorial or Greenway land?
No. York XL received permission from the City of York to build the memorial, but York XL does not own the memorial site or the surrounding Greenway gardens. Future physical work depends on appropriate public permission, partnership, funding, and stewardship agreements.
What has already been completed?
Completed work includes the Ivan & Zach Memorial, an approximately 80-foot cascading raised garden bed, brick areas, extensive plantings, volunteer planting and maintenance days, and continued care of the memorial landscape.
Why describe this as an ecosystem?
The physical gardens are only one layer. Memory, volunteerism, events, learning, public art, walking, youth activity, stewardship, partnerships, and neighborhood relationships interact around the same place. Each part makes the others more useful.
Is the full Broad Street gardenscape funded?
No. The larger gardenscape remains a long-term vision. York XL is pursuing modular support for memorial care, stewardship, storytelling, experience improvements, planning, and organizational capacity rather than presenting one unfunded concept as guaranteed construction.
What is Phase 2?
The current Phase 2 direction emphasizes strengthening the Ivan & Zach Memorial through stewardship, storytelling, learning, placemaking, community activation, visitor experience, and responsible expansion design. Any larger buildout must follow funding, permission, practical design, and long-term care capacity.
How could long-term maintenance be supported?
York XL is exploring a dedicated stewardship fund or endowment alongside annual support, volunteer systems, partnerships, and practical maintenance planning. No fully funded endowment is being claimed on this page.
How can people participate?
People and organizations can contribute through organized stewardship, materials, professional expertise, event collaboration, storytelling, financial support, and long-term partnership. Opportunities depend on current needs and confirmed schedules.
Care for the Place and Its Story
Help EPIC Gardens Remain Useful, Welcoming, and Alive
York XL welcomes neighbors, volunteers, funders, artists, educators, gardeners, businesses, and public partners who want to strengthen stewardship, storytelling, learning, and community life around the gardens.