Yarkon Park is a large public urban park in Tel Aviv.
In the first days of the State of Israel Ben Gurion and the former mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Diezengoff, decided that houses and buildings will not be erected in the area along the banks of the Yarkon River and that this area will remain open and green to the well being of the people of the area.
The planning and development of the Yarkon Park started in 1969. The Yarkon Park company was founded in 1973 and is called Ganei Yehoshua – Yarkon Park, named after Yehoshua Rabinovich, mayor of Tel Aviv in the years 1969 -1974.
In the Park are huge lawns, an artificial lake, a miniature train, playgrounds, cycle tracks, an acoustic shell and amphitheater for shows and concerts, as well a number of unique gardens:
Gan HaBanim commemorates the sons of Tel Aviv - Jaffa who fell in the Israeli wars. In the garden are 11 groves of trees growing in Israel. Every grove represents a period or war. In the groves were placed black granite columns on them engraved the names of the fallen.
Garden of the rocks stretches over an area of 40 dunam. In the garden is a variety of rocks that were brought from all over the country, from the Hermon in the north to Eilat in the south.
Between the rocks were installed hundred species of “Land of Israel” plants that were gathered from all over the country.
On the West Bank of the Yarkon was the flour mill, "seven mills", that ran on water power (actually there were 11 pairs of flour mills). The mill was shut down in the beginning of the 1940’s when motorized mills were build.
Remnants of a diesel motor which served to pump water from the Yarkon could be seen on the West Banks of the river about 300 meter east of the "seven mills".
