Trust for Public Land donors Kenny and Jossie are a match made in parks. The couple spent one of their first dates exploring Golden Gate Park, and a few years later—after many weekend trips to Muir Woods and other favorites—Kenny would propose outside the Dahlia Garden at San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers.

“Parks were the places where we realized we liked the same things—to be outside and wander and just see what we’d come across,” says Jossie. “That’s one of the greatest things about the city of San Francisco: in any direction you walk, you’re going to discover something beautiful and unexpected.”

For their wedding earlier this year, the pair picked Lithia Park in Ashland, Oregon. Since the 1900s, locals have touted the health properties of the park’s spring water—a subject often on Jossie’s mind these days. As a graduate student in urban planning at MIT, she’s studying the changing role of public drinking fountains. 

Of course, the park’s appeal was more than academic. It’s across the street from her grandparents’ home and featured in her very earliest wedding plans. 

“When I was a kid I’d say that I was going to get married there,” Jossie remembers. “I jokingly told Kenny about it the first time I took him to visit my grandparents, and after we got engaged that was the first thing he said: obviously we have to get married in that park!”

When planning for the big day, Kenny and Jossie decided to add The Trust for Public Land to their gift registry.

“We think everyone should have access to amazing parks and outdoor spaces, both within cities and outside of them,” Jossie says. “Parks have been really important in our life together, and so we thought that this would be a meaningful gift for our friends and family to give to us—and to give to more people than just us.”

It’s not every day we’re invited to a wedding. Thanks to you both: we wish you many more good park memories to come!