More than 200 volunteers showed up Saturday at Gateway Park for the city’s annual Earth Day cleanup, according to the Everett Independent, and they got some visible work done.

The city says volunteers removed more than 25 bags of litter and planted more than 300 native trees, shrubs, and groundcover plants along the Malden River. That is the kind of small-bore, practical work Everett could use more of: pick up trash, put things in the ground, improve a waterfront people can actually see and use.

Mayor Robert Van Campen used the event to frame the cleanup as part of a longer project. “What you see today is not a one-time event,” he said. “It is part of a longer commitment this city has made to its waterfront, and to every resident who deserves a clean, green neighborhood to call home.”

Fair enough.

Gateway Park and the Malden River waterfront did not get into their current condition by accident. Everett spent decades carrying the environmental costs of heavy industry while other places got the ribbon cuttings and nice brochure language. So if the city is serious about restoring waterfront land, planting native species, and keeping public spaces usable, that is worth noting.

The city described this year’s planting effort as one of the more ambitious parts of the event. According to the release summarized by the Independent, volunteers and city staff installed “more than 10 species of native trees and shrubs” and applied “soil-building groundcover, nurse seed, and fungi” aimed at long-term soil remediation along the riverbank.

That last part matters more than the usual Earth Day photo-op language. Soil remediation is not glamorous. It is also the difference between a one-day cleanup and actual environmental repair.

The city also leaned hard on Everett’s status as an Environmental Justice community. That label gets thrown around a lot in Massachusetts, sometimes as a branding exercise, sometimes as a weapon in zoning fights. Here, at least, it was attached to something concrete: cleaner riverfront space, more plantings, and a public cleanup with actual bodies on the ground instead of another petition link.

The list of partner groups was long: Clean Up Everett, Mystic River Watershed Association, BSC Group, the New England Revolution, Electrify Everett, Everett Haitian Community Center, Latinos Unidos en Massachusetts, Eliot Family Resource Center, Kiwanis, For Kids Only, and others.

No controversy here, and no need to invent one.

But the test is not whether city hall can gather volunteers for one Saturday in April. The test is whether this work continues when there are no cameras around, whether the plantings are maintained, and whether the city keeps making the waterfront cleaner and more accessible instead of letting it slide back into neglect.

Everett does not need more environmental performance art. It needs fewer trash bags on the ground, more usable green space, and follow-through.

Saturday’s turnout was a good start. The harder part is what happens next week, and next month, when nobody gets an Earth Day applause line for it.