Meg Muckenhoupt
June Garden Tours Around Boston
It’s June in Boston, everything is finally green, and it’s time to take a look at other peoples’ gardens. Below is a list of upcoming Boston-area garden tours roughly inside Route 128 (with a few exceptions). If you’d rather listen to lectures about gardens, or tour a park, see the Green Space Boston Event Calendar for far [...]
What’s in Bloom Now: Lady’s Slippers
Pink lady’s slipper orchids (Cypripedium acaule), May 14, 2012, Lexington, Massachusetts. There are lady’s slippers growing on public land all around Boston, blooming roughly from Mother’s Day to Father’s Day. Look for shady woodlands with acidic soils. Forests with plenty of white pines, oaks, blueberries or huckleberries are good bets. Try the Middlesex Fells, Stony Brook Reservation, [...]
Plans for the Greenway: Markets by Memorials?
In the last week, two different groups have offered up, shall we say, contrasting visions for the Rose Kennedy Greenway. One, the Armenian Heritage Park at the intersection of Atlantic and Cross Street, is almost complete, according to the North End Waterfront. Meanwhile, a block away, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (Mass DOT) is considering four different proposals for Parcel 9, [...]
What’s in Bloom Now: Rhododendron
Dorothy Swift large leaf rhododendron (with a Blue Baron small leaf rhododendron), Alan Payton Rhododendron Display Garden of the American Rhododendron Society Massachusetts Chapter, Elm Bank, Wellesley, May 7, 2012. *** Part of an ongoing series from Meg Muckenhoupt, author of Boston’s Gardens & Green Spaces, where she shines light on what’s currently blooming around Boston. Looking to grow your [...]
Every May Plant Sale in Greater Boston
All right, plant fans: May is here, and it’s time to go buy some plants. Below are listings for every plant sale in May and early June around Boston inside of Route 128 (with a few outliers) which had information that I could reliably locate on the internet. If a sale is missing, please post it in [...]
May Day on the Charles!
All right, what are you doing on May 1, at 5:30 a.m.? I understand that you may be booked later on; after all, it’s one of the last days you can see “Geckos: Tails to Toepads” at the Museum of Science, and the siren song of the Boston Food Truck Tour is hard to resist. But what [...]
Fire: Coming to a Park Near You
Forest Fire (USDA) Massachusetts is burning. Over the weekend fires ravaged three acres in Lexington, four acres apiece in Milford and Worcester, twelve acres of the Lynn Woods, and 50 acres in Brimfield. The entire state was under a red flag fire danger warning from the National Weather Service earlier this week—and some of Boston’s parks could be next to catch the flames. These wildfires aren’t a [...]
April is Not the Cruelest Month in Boston
…because the hanging trailing nasturtiums have returned to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum courtyard. They commemorate Gardner’s April 14 birthday. Gardner hung the first courtyard nasturtiums herself; now, the Museum’s staff hang them every April (except last year, when renovations precluded such gaiety.) She specified that only orange nasturtiums be used, to complement the courtyard’s salmon-pink [...]
Does a Park Need Nature? The Challenge of Chelsea’s PORT
Poor Chelsea! The city’s forthcoming waterside park at 99 Marginal Street was grievously insulted in a recent Salon column titled “New and Improved Parks: Now with No Nature.” Writer Will Doig deplored the lack of “natural beauty” in the plans for the site, otherwise known as the Publicly Organized Recreation Territory (PORT). He did mention that it [...]
