Johnson Park

Downtown Palo Alto is short on open space. Johnson Park is the exception. It fills an entire block just north of University Avenue with grass, trees, a playground, a basketball court and garden plots. Parents from the apartments and old bungalows of Downtown North use it as a backyard. Office workers eat lunch on its benches. On a warm evening the basketball court is rarely empty.

The City of Palo Alto describes Johnson as a 2.5-acre neighborhood park that gives a densely populated area some room to breathe. The address is 268 Waverley Street. This guide covers its features, the doctor it is named for, what the city plans to change and how to reach it on foot, by bike or by train.

Johnson Park at a glance

The city tags Johnson as a park with a community garden and athletic space. Its facility list is short and practical:

• Playground for children.
• Basketball court.
• Picnic tables.
• Walking and bicycle trails, meaning the paved paths that cross the block.
• Community garden plots for residents.

What is missing matters as much. The city lists no restrooms and no drinking fountain at Johnson. With a toddler, plan a stop downtown before you arrive. The park is open from sunrise to sunset and costs nothing.

How a block of houses became a park

Johnson Park is younger than it looks. In 1968 the city bought the whole block bounded by Waverley Street, Kipling Street, Everett Avenue and Hawthorne Avenue. The aim was to give one of the most crowded parts of town some open space. The city tore down the houses on the Waverley Street corners first and built two small mini parks there. Some years later it demolished the remaining houses and dedicated the entire block as parkland.

For its first two decades the park went by a plain planning name, Downtown Park North. In 1986 the city renamed it for Dr. Edith Eugenie Johnson.

Dr. Edith Johnson

Johnson practiced medicine in Palo Alto from 1907 until the 1960s. Over that time she delivered more than 3,500 babies, according to the city. She lived and worked at 375 Hawthorne Avenue, a block from the park that now carries her name. Her career spanned more than half a century, from the years when Palo Alto was a small college town before World War I to the postwar suburb that followed. The house where she practiced stood one block from the park, which is why the city chose this spot to honor her.

The playground and basketball court

The playground is the reason most families come. It is the closest play equipment to University Avenue, which makes it useful for visitors staying downtown with children. Pair a morning at the park with lunch on University Avenue and you have an easy half day without a car. Our playgrounds guide compares it with the bigger destination playgrounds at Mitchell and Rinconada parks.

The basketball court gets steady use from teenagers and adults after school and on weekend afternoons. Picnic tables sit under the trees. The open lawn is small compared with a district park, but it is big enough for a game of catch or a blanket in the shade.

The community garden

Part of the block is given over to garden plots. Johnson is one of the five community gardens the city runs, along with gardens named Eleanor, Rinconada, Ventura and Arastradero. Plots go to Palo Alto residents 18 and older and are assigned for a calendar year, with a waiting list at most sites. The Johnson garden is open daily from sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset. Walk past the fence in late summer and you will see tomatoes, squash and flowers crammed into every bed. Our community gardens guide explains how to apply and what the rules require.

Planned renovation

There are no closures posted on the city's Johnson Park page as of October 30, 2026. A bigger change is on the horizon. A renovation of Johnson Park, project number PE-21002, appears in the city's 2026 to 2031 capital improvement program. A construction leads listing based on that plan, updated in September 2026, describes about $1.7 million of work. It lists repaired pathways, new site furnishings, new playground equipment and safety surfacing, fencing, conversion of planters to native pollinator gardens and upgrades to irrigation and lighting. The same listing shows a start date of March 2029 and a conceptual stage.

Treat those details as tentative. Capital projects often slip. The scope can change after community meetings. When the city schedules outreach, it posts it on the park page. Check the city's Johnson Park page for the latest.

Getting there on foot, by bike and by train

Johnson Park is one of the easiest parks in the city to reach without a car. The Palo Alto Caltrain station at 95 University Avenue is less than half a mile away. From the station, walk east along University Avenue to Waverley Street and turn left. The walk takes about 10 minutes. The same station is the hub for VTA, SamTrans and Stanford's free Marguerite shuttle, so most buses that serve Palo Alto stop within a short walk.

By bike, Bryant Street runs north and south one block west of Waverley. It is the Ellen Fletcher Bicycle Boulevard, the city's original low-traffic bike route. It connects the park to the rest of north and central Palo Alto. Bring a lock and use the racks or a sturdy fence post away from the garden gates.

Driving is the hardest option. Much of Downtown North falls inside the downtown residential permit parking program. Visitors can usually park on the street only for a limited time. The downtown city garages are a better bet. Our guide to parking in Palo Alto explains the time limits and permit zones.

What is nearby

The park sits in Downtown North, the old residential blocks between University Avenue and San Francisquito Creek. The streets around it mix early 20th century bungalows with apartment buildings. A walk of a few minutes in any direction gets you somewhere useful:

• South: University Avenue and the shops and restaurants of downtown, three short blocks away.
• North: San Francisquito Creek and, near the Caltrain tracks, El Palo Alto, the redwood that gave the city its name.
• West: El Camino Park and its sports fields, on the far side of the Caltrain tracks near the station.
• Southeast: Heritage Park on Homer Avenue, with another downtown playground opposite the Museum of American Heritage.

A simple plan for a family day downtown: playground time at Johnson in the morning, lunch on University Avenue, then a walk to El Palo Alto by the creek. Everything on that list is free except lunch.

Frequently asked questions