Aziz Ansari mows lawns in Central Park

Aziz Ansari joined New York City's real life field maintenance department on Monday (02Apr12) to help mow lawns in Central Park.

The Parks and Recreation star plays bureaucrat Tom Haverford in the hit comedy, set in a fictional Indiana parks department, and he put his on-set experience to good use by teaming up with New York's Parks Department and the Central Park Conservancy to help trim the grass of Manhattan's most famous green space.

Ansari rode a lawnmower around Central Park's Sheep Meadow early on Monday morning to help out ahead of the lawns' summer reopening on Saturday (07Apr12).

He tells DNAinfo.com, "When I initially agreed to do this, I thought it would be later in the day and that I would be getting a key to the city. Instead it's really early and I'm getting a key to the city's lawnmower, which I guess is kind of nice. I'll put that along with the other city keys I have - the key to the city's juicer, the key to the city's vacuum cleaner, and of course the key to the city's Showtime rotisserie grill."

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe says of Ansari's hit TV show, "It does actually touch on our lives and some of the crazy things that... have happened. They actually make us proud at Parks to do the work that we do."