Adding some spark to Urban Parks. (Clippings).

Growing up in Texas, where parks and community centers were in short supply, Eleanor Tinsley remembers hearing her father's theory for solving a shortage of open space: Use the churches during the week and the schools in the evenings and on weekends.

That was a long time ago, but Tinsley helped make his musings a reality when, as a member of the Houston City Council, she helped start the SPARK School Park Program in 1983. This summer, Tinsley visited an elementary school to help dedicate the 148th such park.

"It's a wonderful collaborative, cooperative venture--between students and parents, the school district, and the city of Houston--to create something unique for that school," she says.

The idea is to revamp city-owned spaces--usually asphalt playgrounds--already established in urban neighborhoods. Revamping means hiring artists or landscape designers to work with neighbors and students to design the park--incorporating art, running and walking tracks, butterfly gardens, and trees. Experts and volunteers work together on a weekend planting day to put in trees in 15-gallon containers.

Keeping it all in the family, Tinsley's daughter, Kathleen Ownby (above), runs the program. She'll be talking up SPARKs at September's National Urban Forest Conference. The nonprofit is supported by federal, state, and private grants. Schools apply to participate and raise $5,000 of their own money (to offset the $75,000 the park will cost to build, says Ownby), and must help water the trees.

"We encourage them to have classes adopt trees," Ms. Owaby says. "The trees do amazingly well," she says. "A lot of loving care goes into the tree planting."