Being a good neighbor may have something to do with understanding the history of where you live — both its multicultural present and its roots — and taking care of the natural environment that has always shaped it.
In Johns Creek, parks aren’t just green spaces; they serve as gathering places, playgrounds and venues for cultural events that bring the community together — all while keeping us firmly planted in the outdoors year-round.
Our cultural spaces are other touchstones of the community, connecting us through art, literature and music to make the city a better place to live.
Volunteer opportunities abound in Johns Creek, offering everyone a chance to contribute and give back in a way that’s comfortable for them, whether it’s through outdoor projects, ongoing programs or one-day events.
The outdoors
One of the simplest and most meaningful ways to give back and be a good neighbor is by caring for the city’s environment. Local groups are doing just that, blending historical and environmental preservation.
Autrey Mill Nature Preserve & Heritage Center
At Autrey Mill, visitors will find a 46-acre preserve with walking trails, a visitor center, a Farm Museum and a Heritage Village showcasing 400 years of local history through historic buildings — including farmhouses, a country store and a local church building.
On a typical weekend, visitors and their dogs walk the trails, preschoolers play with animals and families enjoy time outdoors together.
“Our mission here is to connect residents and neighboring communities to the ecological and cultural history of the area,” Executive Director Lizen Hayes said.
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Autrey Mill welcomes volunteers of all ages — including high school and college students, families and community service participants — to help with animal care, garden work, maintenance, historical cataloging, landscaping and more.
Autrey Mill also offers unpaid internships and memberships through which visitors can receive discounts on events and weekly and monthly programs. Most programs are kept low-cost or free, including visits to the animal exhibits.
“My favorite part is introducing people who have never been around goats or chickens and teaching them how to handle them or care for them and explaining each animal’s personality,” Hayes said.
She also shared that high school student volunteers can participate in projects like animal care and data-collection, as well as make use of the preserve’s resources and staff for their own projects. One high school student worked on creating a grid to figure out the different kinds of trees at the preserve. Later, she went on to work for the US Forest Service.
“If you can think of something that would be helpful here, we can usually accommodate it. We have all kinds of fun projects,” Hayes said. “I would love to do a display that shows how we moved all the buildings here. We have pictures and newspaper articles, and I’d love to have someone do something creative that would help us get our information out there. We always need website help too.”
One volunteer, Emily Moore, stumbled upon Autrey Mill twelve years ago and has been volunteering since February 2025. Several days a week, she and her husband Scott work with animals, building barn pens, animal ramps and other woodworking projects. She especially enjoys taking care of the goats.
“Because we’re so close, we put them in the barn at night three days a week. And I love that they know us. When we get out of the car, one little goat always does her little baa’s at us,” Moore said. “It’s a beautiful connection, having a pet goat without having a pet goat.”
Moore added that Autrey Mill encourages younger people to volunteer. “Even things like picking up pine cones for crafts for the preschool children, which is wonderful, because I think a lot of places really put limits on that. There is something for everyone here.”
Autrey Mill Nature Preserve: autreymill.org
Chattahoochee River Cleanup
Johns Creek gets its name from one of the Chattachoochee’s local tributaries, which also forms the city’s southern and eastern border. Whether you’re in Shakerag or Newtown Park, the river is always a visible line of sight in the distance and a reminder of the natural habitat in the community’s backyard.
Chattahoochee Riverkeeper works to protect the river through organizing cleanups and advocating to encourage habitat preservation. Their annual trash cleanup event, Sweep the Hooch, occurs at various access points along the river. In 2025, 1,500 volunteers removed 41 tons of trash.
The 16th Annual Sweep the Hooch cleanup is on Saturday, March 21. Volunteers are invited to be either walkers/waders — who will pick up trash on land near the river and in shallow water — or paddlers, who will use kayaks and canoes to pick up litter. The nearest access points are McGinnis Ferry, Jones Bridge or Abbotts Bridge.
Chattahoochee Riverkeeper: chattahoochee.org
Johns Creek Beautification
Each spring, daffodils bloom around the 5K trail around Cauley Creek — a vibrant result of the annual Daffodils4Hope dig day each October.
Daffodils4Hope is a citywide daffodil planting campaign by Johns Creek Beautification to raise awareness and symbolize hope, beauty and support for cancer survivors.
“Everyone’s planting daffodils at the same time, and at the end, we have a big celebration at Cauley Creek Park. You can see on their faces how happy they are. It’s so much fun,” JCB President Liliana Brenner said.
Johns Creek Beautification began in 2007, the same year as the city’s founding. Brenner has been part of the non-profit since 2018, and this is her second year as president.
“It’s a city that gave a lot to me, personally,” she said. “We moved here about 20 years ago, and right away, we felt so comfortable, so integrated. I guess that’s one of the reasons that I was volunteering, just to give back to the city.”
Brenner said that the JCB’s aim has always been to “enhance the well-being and natural beauty of the community.”
During the dig day planting event, volunteers — from high school students and families to groups like the Ismaili Civic Group, Young Men’s Service League and the North Fulton Master Gardeners — come together to plant daffodils. Organizations can also sponsor and plant daffodils at their business, school or community group.
Another JCB program, Art Spot, creates sculptures and public art installations for the City of Johns Creek.
Three life-size dog sculptures sit along the trails of Newtown Park, keeping company with passersby as they stroll. At the Bell Road and Boles Road Roundabout, a forged-steel horse rises on its hind legs as cars circle through. Soon, a third one will be placed near Johns Creek City Hall to commemorate the legacy of Native Americans as the first inhabitants of the Johns Creek area.
Another initiative, the Secret Garden Tour invites visitors into private home gardens, each with a distinctive atmosphere, live music and artists. Residents can volunteer their gardens or volunteer in other ways, including assisting with registration, tabling, setup and artistic activities during the tour. Tickets will be available to purchase on March 1. Proceeds from the tour will support the upcoming public art sculpture.
“I love volunteering here because it gives me the chance to give back in a very visible, meaningful way. Seeing the smiles of families, runners spotting the daffodils along the 5K route, and people discovering sculptures makes all the work worth it,” Brenner said.
Johns Creek Beautification: johnscreekbeautification.org
City of Johns Creek: Ecological Restoration
Two recent environmental projects organized by the city demonstrated additional ways neighbors have been able to pitch in to help out.
Privet removal
City staff and community volunteers removed an estimated 300 pounds of Chinese privet, an invasive plant species common in the Southeast, at Shakerag Park in December.
“Johns Creek residents can help by learning to identify invasive species, planting native species, avoiding dumping plants in the wild, cleaning hiking, sampling, fishing, boating and other equipment well between trips, and ensuring current landscape plants are well contained and controlled,” Communications Director Bob Mullen shared in an email.
Floating wetlands
“The Floating Treatment Wetlands project at Shakerag Park is more than pretty plants. Wetland plants were successfully installed by city staff and community volunteers not just as aesthetic enhancements, but as functional elements engineered for real environmental impact,” Mullen wrote.
These floating plants work to absorb pollutants, reduce erosion and improve fishing conditions.
Along the shoreline, shallow, planted zones called littoral shelves, act as natural barriers to runoff. In addition to the wetlands installation, several new pet waste stations were also added throughout the park, ensuring that residents can easily dispose of their pet waste during walks.
Arts, music and literature
To many, the support of local arts, literature and music can be just as important to shaping a community as its outdoor environments are. For those looking to give back through the arts and cultural events, the city is home to several organizations that are open to volunteers.
The Art Center
The Art Center creates opportunities for art enthusiasts to gather and participate through workshops and classes, exhibitions and art-making spaces, such as a ceramics studio and fine arts classrooms.
“The Art Center is committed to fostering and preserving a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion through our arts programming,” said Executive Director Stephanie Donaldson.
Adult volunteers can contribute in the clay studio, working with kilns and guiding creative projects, while high school students — from Eagle Scouts to Beta Club members — volunteer their time setting up events or playing music at exhibitions. Most recently, a team of 22 volunteers laid down a stone walkway path at the center.
Current intern, twelfth-grader Vanessa Hahn, was first involved with The Art Center through taking a digital art class.
“I really loved the environment, the teachers and all the staff,” she said. “At the end of my junior year in high school, I wanted to find a more career-oriented summer occupation, so I reached out. This is a very nurturing environment; it’s definitely an experience I would recommend to people. I enjoyed their connections with other groups too, like meeting the staff at the Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra through one of their programs.”
Volunteers can assist classrooms in summer and spring break camps, organize art activities at city festivals and help with exhibitions and instruction at the center.
“Our volunteer programs are really the heartbeat of The Art Center. We are grateful for their time, their creativity and generosity that helps make it possible for us to keep the arts accessible to everyone,” Donaldson said.
Upcoming festivals with volunteering opportunities include the Lunar New Year Celebration on February 21, The Art Center’s 30th Anniversary Celebration on March 21 and the International Festival on May 2, where The Art Center will feature various art activities, representing different countries.
The Art Center: itstheartcenter.org
Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra
The Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra offers volunteer opportunities supporting both performances and organizational operations. Roles include ushering, ticket and refreshment sales, working on audience development, offering artistic support, publicity and media relations, marketing and fundraising.
Volunteers can also assist with grants, legal affairs and community outreach with schools and houses of worship.
Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra: johnscreeksymphony.org
Johns Creek Historical Society
The Johns Creek Historical Society was founded in 2017, after founders Joan Compton and Claudette Stecher Lopez recognized the need to document the area’s history.
“The rapid development that began in the 1990s, along with longtime residents moving away, led to the loss of physical connections to the past, including historic buildings,” Compton said. “[The organization] was formed to try to capture as much history as we can before it’s completely lost.”
A typical day’s work involves interviewing residents with roots in the area, digging through historical records, studying maps and consulting books to piece together stories. Compton said she gets calls from authors, universities and students wanting information about their ancestors or where they grew up.
An ongoing project, that began in 2017, researched the abandoned Macedonia African Methodist Church Cemetery. The Historical Society worked on having the headstones repaired and is continuing to research the lives of those buried there.
The nonprofit organization plans to soon restart their pre-COVID monthly meetings, which would consist of updates and speakers with expertise or knowledge about a particular topic of interest, and offer new programs open to the public, as well. They are looking for a centralized location for Johns Creek history archives and museum, and to expand their board.
Volunteers can reach out to work on genealogical or history research, as well as programming, oral histories, history markers around town, reaching out to schools and businesses, data entry and digitizing records and organizing the archives of photos, documents and objects.
Whether it’s the city’s origins as Cherokee land or the gold rush that hit 200 years ago, Compton said there is much to be discovered and shared about the history of Johns Creek.
“I think it’s important to realize, you know, most of us do not have roots in this area,” she said. “But if you live here, or if you work here, just think about how we’re not the first ones who came here. It’s important to use your imagination and learn some history about who was here before and how they lived.”
Johns Creek Historical Society: johnscreekhistory.org
More ways and places to volunteer and give back
In addition to volunteering at parks and cultural centers, there are other great ways to get out and give back to the community in Johns Creek.
Your local library
Teen and adult residents can sign up for volunteer opportunities at the Northeast/Spruill Oaks Library and Ocee Library branches through the Fulton County Library System.
According to the website, these include one-time projects, like National Volunteer Appreciation Week in April, where volunteers are needed for event setup and execution and special talents such as artists, musicians, photographers and singers. Other special events, such as National Library Week in April and the Summer Reading Kickoff in June and Closing Celebration in July also require volunteer assistance.
Fulton County Library: fulcolibrary.org/volunteer-at-fulcolibrary
City of Johns Creek
Work a city event, even for just one evening, by volunteering with the City of Johns Creek.
Residents and community partners are invited to volunteer for a variety of city-sponsored events throughout the year — from large festivals like the Johns Creek International Festival to smaller events such as Adaptive Recreation Bingo Night and community concerts.
Volunteers can sign up through POINT, the city’s volunteer hub, to view upcoming events and register for shifts.
Take part in a Johns Creek tradition and participate in a festival, with many to choose from for each season. Festivals in 2026 include: the Lunar New Year celebration, International Festival, Juneteenth Festival, Independence Day, Arts Festival and the Diwali Celebration.
City of Johns Creek: johnscreekga.gov
One Johns Creek
Part of the One North Fulton coalition, One Johns Creek is an initiative encouraging a drug-free environment for young people and families.
Volunteers can work on areas such as substance misuse prevention and community education through assisting with community events and awareness campaigns. Volunteers can sign up for single day shifts at annual events, such as DEA Take Back Day or Community Safety Day.
Learn more at onenorthfulton.org/one-johns-creek.
