The park bench scene from the movie "Good Will Hunting."

Dialogue on a park bench that appeared in the movie "Good Will Hunting" has prompted fans to start a petition drive to add a bronze statue of the late comedian Robin Williams who starred in the film.

When news of his passing was first announced, many local residents gathered at the wooden bench in Boston Public Gardens and created a makeshift shrine to honor Williams.

Messages of sincerity were scrawled in chalk around the memorial bench. Flowers, candles, beer bottles and other items were also left in remembrance.

The park bench is famous because it is the location of one of the most moving scenes in the film. Williams plays Dr. Sean Maguire, a therapist, who is trying to break through an emotional wall created by Will, portrayed by actor Matt Damon.

Maguire tells the young genius he cannot experience life just by reading an enormous volume of books.

"Do you think I'd know the first thing about how

Prominently display your business on a logo bench in high-traffic areas

A logo bench is one of those savvy guerrilla marketing tactics that many people overlook, but could provide a tremendous boost to a business' brand from large to small.

And it doesn't have to be a park bench. You can get a similar benefit from a logo bike rack, commercial trash can or even an outdoor chair.

Here's why.

In essence, a custom bench is just like creating your own billboard. Even in this era of marketing on Google and Facebook, out-of-home advertising continues to be huge. It's a $7 billion a year business.

Think about it. According to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, consumers spend 70% of their awake time outside of their house. Outside!

That means they are not sitting at home posting cat photos on Facebook or searching for Thai barbecue wing recipes on Google.

They're outdoors most of the day. Walking, driving, riding, standing and talking.

What better opportunity to capture the attention

How you get the public to pick up their trash and place the litter in commercial trash can

When it comes to commercial trash cans in open spaces there's an amazing paradox. People can find time to congregate in green areas or parks to enjoy the beauty of the outdoors, but when they leave, many can't seem to find the time to throw their garbage away.

For the most part, commercial garbage cans are right there. Highly visible.

So what's the thinking? Nature is nice but who wants to clean it up?

Or maybe, let the maintenance crew pick up my mess? That's what they get paid for, right?

Or, geez, I'm kind of tired from chasing a football or soccer ball all day, that big commercial garbage can over there sure seems far away.

Perhaps if I put enough arc on my shot, I can get my McDonald's wrapper in from here.

Come on, folks! This is serious.

In the US, it is estimated that each person generates about 4.5 pounds of trash per day. That's equal to 250 million tons generated by all of us annually,

When you sell park picnic tables, park benches, bicycle racks, aluminum bleachers and commercial trash cans to a niche market of site facility managers it's no easy accomplishment to be included in the distinguished company of Top 500 E-Retailer sites such as Amazon, Wal-Mart, Netflix, Staples, etc.

But The Park Catalog in Boca Raton, Fla. achieved that feat again in 2014 and has maintained this coveted accolade awarded by Internet Retailer Magazine for the past five years in a row.

First, a key element would be the breadth and depth of inventory of commercial site furnishings. Those products include everything from a park bench with a logo, to tip-n-roll bleachers, a park grill, bicycle racks made with recycled plastic and thousands of other hand-picked items.

Park Catalog recognized as Top 500 E-Retailer for Commercial Site Furnishings onlin

The Park Catalog provides commercial site furnishings

Let's talk about speed bump safety for a minute here.

Those parabolic, circular shapes, gently curving upward are there to give people an idea to slow it down…these are speed bumps and humps, and these two words typically get used interchangeably in the traffic safety world. Speed bumps have a more abrupt design and usually stop vehicles completely, where traditionally what we see are speed bumps made of pavement or asphalt which can deteriorate and weather down quickly over time. You will typically see speed bumps and humps in parking lots and residential areas, where speeds should be between 5-10mph, for the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers that depend on the preventative measures that are supplemented by traffic safety in neighborhoods and commercial lots.

While there are numerous amounts of traffic calming and speed deterrent devices to add to your roads and parking lots, each type is dependent on the area and speeds you are trying to adjust your clientele

Eco-Cycling

You already take your bike to work and around town so how much more eco friendly can you be? Well Mauro Hernandez and Bill Holloway say significantly. They are known for their furniture designs at Masterworks wood and Design; however, they are now making bikes out of "urban lumber". What is urban lumber? It is the decaying trees found in cities as well as the timber salvaged from fences and homes. They are taking the infrastructure created and dismantled by people and using it to make transportation in an incredibly environmentally conscious way. Not only are they using salvaged wood but also they apply the environmentally friendly seals and stains by hand so as not to release pollutants that spraying would. Don't think these bicycles are any more fragile than your normal bike, they are just as solid and able to endure the wear and tear of city travelling.

Some other eco friendly bike alternatives include bicycles made from bamboo, which is a highly sustainable material because

We were very fortunate to be a part of creating a new oasis in form of a new community garden called Frog Alley in Delray Beach, FL just a few blocks from where my family and I attend church at St. Paul's on South Swinton Avenue. It was at St. Paul's that I met Jeannie Fernsworth, a passionate advocate of community gardens and the grown locally movement who never misses an opportunity to share her passion for community gardens and to enlist others in her cause to build more of them in Palm Beach County.

I have been inspired by how many people and organizations came together to create this beautiful garden. The Delray Chamber of Commerce got involved and the Delray Garden Center donated labor and materials. The real champions of the project were Pablo de Real and Ashley Moore. Both worked countless hours, coordinated dozens of volunteers, managed the local permitting process and put their backs into the manual work of constructing planting beds, moving soil and more. Pablo is committed to

This is an open letter to property managers from across country.

The Park Catalog is the property managers' catalog.

The Park Catalog has been serving property managers for a long time because we know and understand the needs of both you and the properties you manage.

Property management companies and properties alike have reputations. "A dangerous parking lot," is not the reputation you want associated with your property.   We all aim to shine a positive light on public spaces, trying to promote testimonies like "Clean," "well lit," "safe" and "attractive." Site furnishings are the key to creating that positive environment and branding commercial and multi-family properties, an increasingly important factor as these markets have grown and consolidated over the past two decades.

For better or worse, the quality of your commercial site furnishings defines your property's brand, not entirely but in an outsized way relative to investment.  They are usually the first impression of your

David Byrne with custom bike rac

I have admired David Byrne for as long as I can remember.

I was stuck by his unique and creative musical talents as a teenager. I was a child (teenager) of the eighties and there was no one on the musical scene like David Byrne and the Talking Heads. As I grew older, I lost track of Byrne and so many other great musicians, until he emerged as host of a Sunday evening PBS music program which was terrific. Over time I discovered we shared a passion for cycling as a form of transportation and a "vehicle" for exploration.  As fate would have it, we both see the bike rack as an opportunity for artistic expression that in a subtle way makes bicycle commuting a little more fun and cool.  Of all the products we design and sell at The Park Catalog, custom bike racks are by far my favorite and I was inspired by David Byrne's New York City custom bike rack design contest to challenge our designers and myself to conceive of even more creative designs that inspire

During the month of August I went to Seattle for the American Community Garden Association annual meeting. It was a reaffirming meeting with lots of helpful workshop information about how to be a better community gardener, how to work with the city, how to work with limited resources, and how to work with our neighbors.

People all over the country seem to have the same issues and some of the same answers, but it was the creative, fresh approaches that gave everyone at the conference a "WOW, why didn't I think of that?" More on that later.

The keynote speaker at the conference was a Muckleshoot Native American woman named Valerie Segrest. She stayed true to herself and delivered with an intelligent dry humor. She talked about how her tribe lived on a mountain plateau between the Green and White Rivers.

I failed to comprehend why she didn't say she lived near Seattle, which was named for an American Indian Chief. Valerie has been doing her graduate work on a food sovereignty

Who would think picnic tables could be so exciting? Well we do. One of our favorite experiences as a team at The Park Catalog is getting to hear back from our customers. Sometimes we get a phone call about adjusting a product's color or size and we are happy to help, reassured by the idea that our customers feel confident enough that we can get them exactly what they need. Other times our customers have great feedback about their experiences with our online order cart, helpful staff, comprehensive selection, or high quality picnic tables.

However, the best contact we get from customers is when we get a testimonial, and especially a picture,  of smiling faces from a successful site furnishing installation. A recent installation of elongated expanded metal picnic tables left the entire office, from accounting to sales, feeling that much better about how our products and our service can help a community.

Saleswoman Carrie Georgopoulos recently shared an email testimonial that included

Wildlife conservation is a topic of importance today. We are making many changes in our lives to be more 'green'. Whether it is the shampoo we choose, riding our bike to work or taking shorter showers, there are many 'green' options to help minimize our negative impact on our environment. Finding the balance between the ever evolving human developments and maintaining nature's habitats is a difficult and pressing responsibility that organizations all over the world work to navigate every day.

Ecoducts are one of the many solutions that help to bridge that balance. They're structures that allow wildlife to cross man-made barriers, such as highways, safely. Habitat fragmentation, the division or separation of natural habitats by human development, is a threat to wildlife and these ecoducts allow the connection or reconnection of habitats that have been separated by our infrastructures.

There are many benefits that result from ecoducts, for both the environment and humans. The animals get

There are few experiences that awaken the soul like visiting the western mountain states.  Everything there is on such a grand and wondrous scale.  I have by no means seen every National Park in America, but I'm glad I can say I was able to cross two off my list this year with my summer excursion to Moab, UT.

We are all engaged in problem solving solutions to support a more gentle harmonious approach to living with nature. It is grassroots without the water guzzling grass, it is down home dirt without the dust of old ways of doing things and it is plain folk doing extraordinary things.

Welcome to The Park Blog. We're here as a community of people interested in bettering public spaces and the people who occupy them. Sometimes, that means installing a trash receptacle to encourage park visitors to help keep the field green. Sometimes it means planting a seed. And sometimes, bettering a public space means helping the people that occupy it to work  together better.

We're always learning, growing, and working together. In this blog, we hope to bring to light some of the ways our neighborhoods, parks, institutions and friends come together to better the world around us.