News Blog - DiBaggio Design Portfolio park.dibaggio.com

The PHP West Dog Park on the NW Military Hwy Side will be closed from 10 a.m. to Noon this Saturday for mulching.

Join us at Canine Capers from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. in the open field on the NW Military Hwy side, or check out the PHP East Dog Park on the Blanco Rd side of the park.

Or... wait to visit the PHP West Dog Park at noon and have fresh mulch to roll around in!

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Thanks to supporters like you, the Conservancy raised $187,911, plus a matching donation of $10,000 through Birdies for Charity^® an exciting fundraising program linked to the Valero Texas Open, the 3^rdoldest tournament on the PGA TOUR schedule.

The community gathered on October 6 to celebrate the start of construction on the Robert L.B. Tobin Land Bridge at Phil Hardberger Park.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg announced San Antonio’s renewed commitment to the National Wildlife Federation Mayor’s Monarch Butterfly Pledge at a press conference Monday.

Being active in nature makes kids happier,” says the National Environmental Education Foundation. Nature’s Garden Summer Camp was first offered at Phil Hardberger Park in 2014…

The Phil Hardberger Park Children’s Vegetable Garden was awarded First Place by the Texas Master Gardener Association 2016 Search for Excellence Awards. The Bexar County Master Gardener Assoc. received the award.

The three donors, each giving $1 million, are Phil and Linda Hardberger, the Klesse Foundation (Bill and Margie Klesse), and the Voelcker Fund.  Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff announced that he is working to secure $1 million in County funds for the bridge.

The final recommendations from the bond committees include $13 million for the Land Bridge. Your help is still needed.

Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy won $7,500 in prize money for Most Donors in the Community Improvement, Environment, and Parks category during Big Give 2016.

On May 3, from midnight to midnight, you can be part of this great event. San Antonio will come together for 24 hours of nonprofit giving during The Big Give S.A., and Phil Hardberger Park is taking part!  It is San Antonio’s third annual giving day.

Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that supports Phil Hardberger Park. Which begs the question – why does a city park need its own nonprofit? Bottom line – the city can only do so much.

Phil Hardberger Park tops the list again in 2016!

Thank you to our sponsors and the many friends who attended the Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy's gala in October.

Thanks to your generosity, the Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy raised $26,101 through The Big Give S.A. on May 5, 2015. 

Two years ago San Antonio Natural Area Education Coordinator Peggy Spring had a dream of starting an educational program where toddlers love and experience nature in the first years of life. From this grew the Starting Out Wild (SOW) concept.

View the photo gallery

Meet Atticus—the first PAWS for the Park member of the Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy.

$22,946 was raised through TheBigGiveSA, including 3 prizes totaling $4000 awarded to the Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy.

Readers of the San Antonio Current recently voted in the magazine's "Best of San Antonio" poll.

The Alamo Area Council of Governments recently recognized the Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy with its Air Quality Stewardship Award in the Nonprofit Organization Category.

Watch this welcome video of Phil Hardberger Park…

Watch this video about our latest art installment…

In the Best-of-the-City issue San Antonio Magazine declared Phil Hardberger Park the best city park! Here is what they had to say...

On Nov. 16, 2013, members of the Alamo Chapter Wild Turkey Federation presented Wild Turkeys in Texas at Phil Hardberger Park. The Alamo Area Master Naturalists sponsored the program. Here are highlights of the presentation.

Like many of Anne Wallace’s public commissions, Golden Age, addresses life growing up in a Texas ranching family, Wallace sought to engage the natural and agricultural history of the land that has become Phil Hardberger Park.

The crowd Saturday grew to hundreds — from teenage snake handlers to the grand opening of the newest showpiece in the city's park system.

The kids of Hardberger Park learned how to bait a hook, cast a line and handle a fish—and they did it on dry land!

The restoration of the Voelcker dairy barn was celebrated April 13, 2013. The 1500 square foot dairy barn went through a major transformation.

With health benefits linked to a positive demeanor, brighten your mood at one of San Antonio’s cheery check-ins.

Hardberger Park will get a half-million-dollar shot in the arm from donors attending the “Connect to Nature” gala Thursday night at the acreage.

Restoration of the original Voelcker dairy barn is underway.

Our city’s much-deserved gift to our wonderful pets, the Hardberger Park has a dog-size safe haven for pups to pick on someone their own size.

Betty Sutherland, executive director of the Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy, won the San Antonio Business Journal's Going Green Award for Land Conservation.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012 at 4:30 p.m., the Phil Hardberger Park Conservancy accepted a check presented by G. Douglas Edwards of Henrietta Partners.

Please make sure to vote yes for the City of San Antonio 2012-2017 Bond Program on May 12th.

If you’ve noticed more people leaving the home or office behind to get some work done in the park that’s because Phil Hardberger Park recently became the first park in the city to offer free wireless service to visitors.

The birding community was buzzing over spring break at the sighting of a Golden-cheeked Warbler at Phil Hardberger Park.

The Salado Classroom / Restroom Building, Salado Creek Overlook and east dog park trail are now open on the east side of the park.

They began in February, a small dedicated team of NuStar employees with a passion for Phil Hardberger Park and a desire to help.

The new year will usher in the third phase of the five-phase development of Phil Hardberger Park.

On October 22, 2011, Nyta Brown of Texas Parks & Wildlife Old Tunnel Wildlife Management Area, led our education program on bats.

The construction at the north end of the parking lot on the east side of Phil Hardberger Park is nearing completion as the long-awaited Salado Classroom Building is expected to open to the public in November.

Also scheduled to open in November is the new Salado Creek Overlook.

When New York City entered a period of economic and social upheaval in the 1970s and Central Park suffered years of neglect, San Antonio native Elizabeth Barlow Rogers came to the rescue.

The towering figures, which stand up to 17-feet tall and weigh more than 1,000 pounds each, spent the last two years on city-owned property near Mission San Juan de Capistrano.

The Shavano Park Women's Club came to Phil Hardberger Park for a walk and talk about native plants and future plans for Hardberger Park and the Salado Creek Greenway.

NuStar Energy has adopted Phil Hardberger Park and the adjacent Salado Creek Greenway as part of the City of San Antonio’s Adopt-a-Park program.

Volunteers with the Associated General Contractors’ Construction Leadership Forum (CLF) will begin tomorrow, Saturday, March 19 a two-year-long community service project to restore the nineteenth century dairy barn at Phil Hardberger Park.

For February 2011, FIDOFriendly.com polled readers on top Dog Friendly Destinations. No surprise to us, Phil Hardberger Park is included with selected parks that rate as “…Paradise for pooches and people who like the great outdoors.”

The May 15 grand opening of Phil Hardberger Park, including the mile and a half of hiking trails, playscape and the city's largest dog park, was just the beginning of the former dairy farm's transformation into a world-class park.

In keeping with the park’s master plan, the City of San Antonio’s Parks and Recreation Department is restoring grasslands in the park. While the 311-acre property features many native trees, there are virtually no native grasses — less than 1 percent, according to a plant survey conducted as part of the master plan.

Thanks to the Lackland Air Force Base dog trainers who brought police dogs to demonstrate what they are trained to do.

The best measure of the May 15 grand opening of Phil Hardberger Park may have been a question overheard from a little boy as his family was leaving the playground. “Mom, can we come back next week?” the boy asked his mother.

More than a few Conservancy board members commented on the seemingly miraculous work of Xavier Urrutia’s Parks and Recreation Department staff to prepare the park for the grand opening despite the torrential rain the day before. More than 100 city employees worked in the rain all day Friday preparing the park for the big weekend.

Stroller Strides of North San Antonio is using the park for a full body exercise for mothers with their children in strollers. The classes consist of intervals of power walking and muscle strengthening exercises using resistance tubing.

Standing in front of the new Hardberger Park sign on Blanco Road, Phil and Linda Hardberger presented a $100,000 check from the Phil and Linda Hardberger Foundation.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission has awarded $1 million for Phil Hardberger Park and $750,000 for Mission County Park.

Groundbreaking ceremony at Phil Hardberger Park - City officials and residents who have long worked to create a public urban park out of the former Voelcker dairy farm in North Central San Antonio will soon see the fruits of their labor at last.

Two San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department development projects will receive awards today for outstanding planning.

With the first phase of development of Phil Hardberger Park nearing completion, city officials and consultants have unveiled plans for the second round of improvements.

Mayor Phil Hardberger doesn't waste words, but he can become downright loquacious when describing the 300 acres of oak savannah known as Phil Hardberger Park.

White Mountain Apache group, looks to the sky during the Phil Hardberger Park open house.

Grassland restoration is included; work on the North Side site could start in January.

Experts say grassland ecosystem's revival at Phil Hardberger Park would benefit the environment.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission awarded the city of San Antonio a $1 million matching grant Thursday to develop the new 311-acre Phil Hardberger Park in the north-central part of the city.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission awarded the city of San Antonio a $1 million matching grant Thursday to develop the new 311-acre Phil Hardberger Park in the north-central part of the city.

Conservation to be weighed by City Council this summer. A city panel has gone forward with plans to protect a dozen historic structures dating as far back as the late 1700s, including a house built by an early Texas settler a few years after the battle of the Alamo.

Phil Hardberger Park's caretaker hopes to stay long after it opens to public.

City Council approves master plan and funds for first phase of design. Phil Hardberger Park already looks like the land suburban development forgot. Now it should remain that way a wooded oasis bisected by busy streets and surrounded by neighborhoods.

City officials, led by Mayor Phil Hardberger, are charging hard to buy the 311 acres and turn it into one of the city's largest parks. A stroll through Max and Minnie Voelcker's old dairy farm is like a glimpse into San Antonio's past.

A venture headed by former Dallas Mayor Robert Folsom has been the envy of area developers for 25 years.

A 175-foot-wide bridge designed so deer can safely cross Wurzbach Parkway could be the crown jewel of what the city is billing as a world-class urban park.

The "Dog Tails on Voelcker Trails" event encourages citizens to bring their pets for free microchipping, a service the city of San Antonio's Animal Care Services is now requiring for all its new pet adoptions.

In order to preserve the natural landscape of the park, we can only allow recreational bicycling into the park. However off-road mountain biking enthusiasts are encouraged on the Salado Creekway program. 

The team of consultants tapped to create a master plan for Phil Hardberger Park on the North Side will unveil a conceptual design Monday for the 311-acre former dairy farm.

The solution is obvious. Phil Hardberger Park should become a double-decker. The lower level can remain forever in its "pristine" prairie-and-woodlands condition. The upper level can be filled with all the amenities of an active urban park.

San Antonio Utilizes National Design Competition Process — For parks and recreation professionals it is the opportunity of a lifetime - to save 311 acres of pristine land in the heart of a heavily developed metropolitan area from becoming a concrete jungle by turning it into an urban park.

City officials have long touted Voelcker Ranch as a destination park — a spectacular landscape with centuries-old oak trees that will draw people from all over town, much as Brackenridge Park does.

Four companies vying for a contract to design the proposed Phil Hardberger Park Reserve

Bird enthusiasts, hikers and ordinary folks turn out to enjoy new trail at Phil Hardberger Park's second open house.

Mayor Phil Hardberger pitched the purchase of the 311-acre North Side property for a new city park.

"Try buying tract from developer", "Land is a North Side treasure", "Better than thousands of homes".

Park plan could be a chance to turn things around for green urban space on the North Side.

City Council is expected to authorize negotiations to purchase 311 acres of parkland on the North Side

San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger said Thursday that the city has finalized the purchase of the first two tracts of Voelcker Ranch land in North San Antonio.

But a Dallas investor has first right to 311-acre Voelcker property; city condemnation an option.

City officials want to acquire a new 311-acre park on the North Side.