Daily Archives: April 15, 2019

Wednesday, May 1, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – A Grassland Restoration Tale of Weeds, Wildlife, and Renewal

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Restoring weed-dominated habitats comes with many complex challenges and often involves difficult tradeoffs. This process is even more complicated in public landscapes with diverse constituencies. Join landscape designer Jenna Webster, co-curator of the New Directions in the American Landscape conference, and a teacher in the Ecological Gardening Certificate program at the Mt. Cuba Center, on May 1 at 7 pm at the Cambridge Public Library at 449 Broadway in Cambridge to learn how Larry Weaner Landscape Associates negotiated these challenges in their restoration planning for a 100-acre grassland at Croton Point Park in New York. Located atop a capped landfill, this site provides vital habitat for imperiled bird species. The Park’s popularity and complex history led Jenna and her team to seek stakeholder input, synthesize crowd-sourced ecological data, and utilize scientific research— creating a thoughtful restoration plan that is now under construction. This case study gives us valuable lessons for land restoration on sites both large and small, and particularly for protecting specialized habitat used by native wildlife.

The Grow Native Massachusetts free program is part of its Evenings with Experts 2019 slate.

Image result for croton point park Larry Weaner

Reconnect Parkland Through Storrow Project

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MassDOT has opened a public conversation about the reconstruction of Storrow Drive near Kenmore Square where it intersects with the Bowker Overpass.

They have developed an approach that offers the exciting prospect of moving Storrow further back from the River and consolidating parkland. Planners are converging on Options 3A or 3B in this slide deck. Worth noting: The project does not include, but will be done so as not to foreclose, the daylighting of the Muddy River’s entrance to the Charles.

A lot of thinking has been to identify these options, but a lot of design and engineering work remains to be done in collaboration with neighbors and the larger public. A meeting was held to start the conversation with representatives of neighborhood groups and abutting institutions — much more conversation to come.

The project is likely to begin construction in roughly 2023. To learn more about this project, contact State Senator Will Brownsberger at http://willbrownsberger.com, or call his office at 617-722-1280.