by Darrah Cole The Greenway horticulture staff is excited to have new, innovative planting designs installed along the length of The Greenway in downtown Boston, MA. Two narrow parcels along Surface Road near South Station and two others in the North End Park along Cross Street have been planted to create the end points of…
Urban Landscaping
Discovering Garden Gems
Public and private gardens are a source of beauty and inspiration any time of year, but especially in the full bloom of summer. That’s also the time many of us travel to unfamiliar locales for graduation parties, weddings, and family reunions. During your travels, consider scheduling an excursion to a local garden.
We’re in a Tight Spot — Landscape Design for Small Urban Spaces
by Amy Nyman Cities are places of condensed layers of people, vehicles, and building materials. Plants are also found there, but too often, intentionally designed landscapes and interesting plant materials are lacking.
Small Urban Gardens: Big Challenges, Greater Rewards
by Carol Spitzer What makes designing for small urban properties equally challenging and fun? Sometimes the challenges seem endless: very small spaces to work in, shade in all forms, tree roots galore, too much asphalt, the desire for privacy in a non-private setting, intruding bulkheads, and almost always: cars, and where to park them. Often…
2,000 Gallon Project
by Nick Shannon The 2,000 Gallon Project envisions a healthier Gowanus community through a conventional dumpster planted with native trees and perennials. Each dumpster provides a visual representation of the amount of stormwater a bio-swale can handle during a storm event and brings attention to the issue of Combined Sewage Overflows (CSO) emptying into the…
Bus Stop Green Roofs Win Greenovate Boston Award
Green roofs installed on several Boston bus shelters received a Greenovate Boston Award at the Greenovate Boston Community Summit held at Northeastern University on June 6, 2015. Funded by an Environmental Protection Agency grant, the project partnered Fairmount/Indigo Line Community Development Corporation Collaborative and Trevor Smith’s Land Escapes Design Inc. Trevor is the current president…
Tree Growing Contracts: The Solution to a Steady Supply of Quality Trees
by Matthew Stephens New York City is on the verge of completing a major tree planting project through its MillionTreesNYC initiative. It is expected that by the fall of 2015 one million trees will have been planted throughout all of New York City over the course of seven years. MillionTreesNYC was announced in the fall…
The Green Alley, the Water Table, and the Ostrich
By Maureen Sundberg on December 15, 2014 in Stormwater Management, Sustainability, Urban Landscaping
by Heather Heimarck Boston Architectural College’s “Green Alley” was built with the intention of creating a replicable model that would ameliorate negative environmental impacts caused by urban streets and high building density. Cities lack porous surfaces to return stormwater into the ground due to road, rooftops and sidewalks built with non-absorptive or impervious surfaces. The…
2014 Community Project: Arcola Park Rehab
Tucked away off a side street in the Hyde Park Square area of Jamaica Plain, Arcola Park was a rough-cut gem until July 22nd when the Ecological Landscape Alliance (ELA), Boston Natural Areas Network (BNAN), and the Landscape Institute at Boston Architectural College (BAC) met to polish the park into a fine jewel.
Beautifying Public Places: The Importance of Plants
By Penny Lewis on February 17, 2014 in Landscape Design, Public Gardens and Parks, Urban Landscaping
by Lynden B. Miller One of the most important elements in successful public urban green space is PLANTS. Over the last 30 years in New York City, we have found exciting reasons to use plants in new ways to improve the lives of city dwellers. We now know that plants have the power to soften…
The Spicket River Greenway: Habitat Creation at Manchester Street Park
By Maureen Sundberg on October 15, 2013 in Native Plants, Public Gardens and Parks, Restoration, Urban Landscaping
by Brad Buschur The City of Lawrence, MA, has three very distinct rivers flowing through its boundaries. The wide Merrimack River flows through the heart of Lawrence’s Mill districts. The Shawsheen River flows northward through a small river floodplain forest. The Spicket River has been engineered to flow through residential neighborhoods, and the process of…
Greening the Greenway
by Stu Shilaber The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway is Boston’s only organically maintained public park and one of a handful of organically maintained urban parks in the United States. The Greenway was built atop the main north/south tunnel of the Central Artery by the State of Massachusetts, which replaced a 1950s era elevated highway in…
