Mary Holland Park — Attraction in Bartow

Things just aren’t how they were even 3 years ago… there was a woman sitting on the bench with a jar of butter eating shrimp throwing the peel on the ground gossiping loudly on the phone while her child played (nothing wrong with eating at the park but littering is gross lol) … not even making sure her child was being kind and decent to the other kids… everyone is so consumed by their phones and gossip that they don’t even care about raising their children right … I told my son “let’s go, these children don’t have the best manners” the child ran and told his mother… she stopped and said “I don’t give a dam what anyone says, go play with them other kids”… does anyone else remember when parents actually cared how their kids acted?? That mess wouldn’t have flown in the 90’s 😂…Now the parents will have their kids cuss you out too…the generation we are raising now will be the ones caring for us when we can’t anymore… what a scary future to come… the park is still an overall wonderful place… but people need to clean up behind themselves and clean up their act because our little ones are watching...

All ages will find something to love at this park! There is an area for skate boarders, a soccer field, two different playground areas one even has baby swings... and yes, there are restrooms nearby. The pavilions are spaced apart nicely, with lots of grassy areas and plenty of trees. The walking trail winds around the lake, where I saw a couple of people fishing from a rowboat. The entrance into the park is quite nice, reminds me of a peaceful country road. Plus there is a lot of parking space along the entrance road with plenty of green space to sit on a blanket or at one of the pavilions to enjoy the view of the water away from the noisier part of the park that is...

Pretty run down overall, not a bad place to get away and get outside I guess but it used to be much nicer. We were eating in a pavilion no one was using and city employee asked if we had a reservation, he obviously knew we didn’t because they put signs on the pavilion when reserved, but when I told him we didn’t he told us we couldn’t use the trash cans? Not allowed to use the trash cans in a public park? As we were leaving I looked in a few of the cans, they were 1/4 to 1/2 full of water from all the rain and had trash in them, so no idea, seems like a strange request, so unless you have a reservation they don’t want you to use the trash...