The Astoria Park Alliance insists that new signs, bulletin boards and a playground fence would improve their beloved neighborhood park.

A woman gazes at East River while a teenager reads on the lawn, Oct. 20, 2009. Photo: John Ryan.

But the local environmental group cannot buy the equipment it says it needs unless the latest grant application is approved or its winter fundraising is successful. Money is tight for the small environmental non profit, particularly in the recession.

“After a while, paying out of your pocket really starts to hurt,” said Jules Corkey, co-chair of the group.

The Astoria Park Alliance is one of many neighborhood organizations that help to maintain New York City’s 1,500 green spaces. These groups devote time, manpower and money to clean up the parks and act as watchdogs over community areas. But with fewer and fewer resources, advocates worry that they will not be able to devote as much cash to keeping the parks beautiful and clean, nor do they believe that the city can handle the job on its own.

“There’s no way a large park organization can be the sole advocate,” said Nora Lanning, director of marketing at the City Parks Foundation. “It really takes these smaller organizations to be the voice.”

The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation did not return calls for comment.

Smaller organizations have been working in Astoria Park for the last six months. In September, the advocacy group Green Shores New York teamed up with Astoria Park Alliance to collect 70 bags of trash along the East River. This past summer, the groups also sponsored the Astoria Water Walk, which they said drew hundreds of residents out of their homes into Astoria Park.

Martha Gilpin, the other co-chair of the Astoria Park Alliance, called the two groups “the pool of passionate and energized people that make things happen in the volunteer community.”

Before the winter snow, another volunteer group will plant daffodils near the war memorial in the park. They will seed and mulch the Butterfly Garden, and they plan to host a vendor sale at the Steinway Reform Church to raise money.

“You see a lot of improvement,” said Abdel Berraha, a resident who has photographed community events in Astoria for the last 10 years. “The parks are hard to maintain.”

In addition to keeping up the gardens and planting trees, local environmental groups also want to call attention to the erosion that is pulling topsoil into the water and exposing tree roots on the shoreline of Astoria Park that slopes into the East River.

“Green space is fragile,” Gilpin said. “We have a lot of work to do.”