The Trustees will lead a guided walk in the Leland Cooperative Garden with herbalist and arborist Alex Klein to learn key characteristics that will provide you the skills to identify any tree, even in the winter months. Stick around after the walk for the Leland Garden’s winter solstice celebration. 2:20 – 4 is the Tree ID walk (meet at 4 Leland Street in Jamaica Plain), 4 – 5 hot cider, 5 pm solstice circle. Sliding scale registration required. Scan the QR code below.
Join The Garden Conservancy on Sunday, June 1 for a special partnership with COG Design. The three sites are Hood Bike Park, Charlestown, from 10-12, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, from 2-4, and COG designer Shoma Haque’s Jamaica Plain garden from 10-4. Tickets and complete information will be available at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/. On June 21, head to New Bedford to Abolition Row Park from 12 – 2.
Join The Emerald Necklace Conservancy on August 25 at 10 am for a new tour in partnership with the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. Discover the wooded paths, babbling brooks and rolling hills of Olmsted Park and Pinebank, the forested midway point of Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace and source of the Muddy River.
This free tour will guide attendees through many of the natural and historic landmarks found in the heart of the Necklace: from glacial ponds to structures that once belonged to the Founding Fathers, and everything in-between!
Registration required at https://www.emeraldnecklace.org/event/exploring-olmsted-park-2/
UMASS professor and author Ethan Carr discusses his 2023 nonfiction book, Boston’s Franklin Park. Franklin Park is one of the great urban parks of the world. Generations of Bostonians have loved this landscape and invested it with many diverse memories and meanings. Today the park is at a turning point. Mayor Wu has approved an Action Plan to guide its future, and the City of Boston and its partners have proposed new multi-million dollar construction projects. The time is right to consider the past, as well as the future, of Franklin Park.
Ethan Carr is a professor of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His latest book is Boston’s Franklin Park (Amherst: Library of American Landscape History, 2023).
This event is co-sponsored by the Grove Hall Branch of the BPL, the Dorchester Historical Society and the JP Historical Society. It is free and open to the public. It will use a hybrid format you can attend in-person or via Zoom. Please register here for the Zoom details: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pUtwfzf1RL-U8n5yWxCJdw
In the case of heavy snow, the event will be held virtually.
Take a peek into private gardens in lovely Jamaica Plain. After a wonderful launch last year, the Second Annual Jamaica Plain Garden Tour features a new selection of lush, expansive private gardens in the Pondside neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. Many of the gardens feature beautiful stonework, as well as unique specimen plants. Proceeds from the tour support Trustees’ community gardens citywide. Members of The Trustees price: $20, nonmembers $25. Day of tour tickets will rise to $24/$30. Start location is JP Licks, 659 Centre Street In Jamaica Plain. Register online at http://www.thetrustees.org/things-to-do/metro-boston/event-46168.html
Jamaica Plain’s fabulous restaurant, Aurum Restaurant, 377 Centre Street, and Boston Ferments are teaming up for a night of fermentation. The workshop will include a fermented dinner & paired fermented drinks, a short lecture on the history & culture of fermentation, and a hands-on fermentation demo.
The evening kicks off with a fermentation-inspired vegetarian kimchi Lebanese pie (which can be vegan – please just let us know) plus a selection of sides. We are pairing this meal with unique fermented cocktails (served in handcrafted cups which you will take home) by workshop leader Jeremy Ogusky.
Next, we will have a short discussion on the biological, political, and symbolic ‘culture’ of fermented foods around the world with Jeremy, a local fermenting enthusiast and JP studio potter. We will then learn to make one of the simplest lacto-fermented treats – sauerkraut. We will break into groups, chop veggies and everyone will go home with a jar full of fermenting cabbage.
All participants will finish the workshop with a healthy belly full of fermented foods as well as the knowledge & confidence to begin fermenting in their kitchen, and a jar full of fermenting kraut. This starter class will cover everything you need to start fermenting on your own: philosophy, preparation and problem-solving.
If you want to learn to ferment AND go home with a handcrafted fermentation crock to create your own sauerkraut, kimchi & pickles in, this is your chance. Our instructor, Jeremy, is a studio potter and creator of the crocks and he will bring a selection of colors to the workshop that you can choose from. Then you can prepare your own sauerkraut in the workshop in your own handmade crock.
$49 for dinner/ drink pairing & workshop; $100 for dinner/drink pairing, workshop & handcrafted fermentation crock. Register online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fermentation-101-workshop-fermented-dinner-drinks-pairing-hosted-by-aurum-restaurant-tickets-31075746394?aff=es2
Erica S. Nazzaro has been expressing herself creatively through the arts all her life. She expresses the feeling a place conveys rather than the realistic image of what she sees. Erica is spontaneous and curious, using accidents as opportunities. Her painting is a meditative exercise where she becomes the vessel of connection between the environment, her feelings, and the materials she uses. Erica’s paintings are moments in nature captured and provides a serene and calming effect. She graduated from The School of the Museum Of Fine Arts in 1984 and went on to get her Masters in Social Work in 2003. She now combines her art and therapeutic work in a healing process with transitional age youth, families, and children. She is a member of Uforge Member Collective, Newton Watercolor Society, Jamaica Plain Artists Association and Hyde Park Artists Association. The July exhibit will take place at the Connolly Branch of the Boston Public Library, 433 Centre Street in Jamaica Plain.
Residents of Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Chinatown/Leather District, Dorchester, Downtown, Fenway-Kenmore, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, North End, Roxbury, South Boston, South End, and the West End can enjoy food deliveries at a cost of $23 and up.
Valley Green Feast, Western Mass’ trusted local, organic food delivery service is offering $5 off their first order with the coupon code, VGFBOS.
Orders will be delivered by bike thanks to our co-op partners, Boston Collective Delivery, from their hub on Channel St. Enjoy customized produce baskets in different sizes, meat, cheese, yogurt, baked good and so much more biked right to your door. For complete details visit www.valleygreenfeast.coop. Image of cooperative members from www.bostonmagazine.com.
On November 19 at 6:00 p.m. the Jamaica Plain Historical Society will show the movie, “Conservation of Matter: The Fall and Rise of Boston’s Elevated Subway“, at the Connolly Branch Library in Jamaica Plain. This is a repeat showing of the film which was shown at the Loring-Greenough House previously. This documentary follows the journey of 100,000 tons of steel from the Boston Elevated Subway, which was erected in 1898, demolished in 1987, and then shipped eight thousand miles away to Japan to be melted and made into steel beams. These beams then cross the ocean again, where they are fabricated into a remarkable new structure in a surprising location. For complete information visit www.jphs.org.
The Jamaica Plain Historical Society conducts tours of historic areas of Jamaica Plain each Saturday in July, beginning at 11:00 am, and lasting between 60 and 90 minutes. The tours are free, open to the public, and are canceled in case of heavy rain. No reservations are required – just meet the guide at the location listed below.
July 7 (also repeated August 25) – Sumner Hill. View a sumptuous sampling of 19th-century Victorian houses — one of the finest collections of “painted ladies†outside of San Francisco. The tour includes the ancestral home of the founder of the Dole Pineapple Company, as well as the homes of several early feminists and an anti-racism activist. Sumner Hill was designated a National Historic District in 1987. Leaves from Loring-Greenough House, 12 South St.
July 14 (also repeated September 1) – Stony Brook. Explore a fascinating industrial area at the geographic heart of Boston that includes 19th-century tannery and brewery buildings, the homes of early German settlers, and today’s Samuel Adams beer company. In the 1970s, a coalition of community groups joined together to block construction of the Southwest Expressway through Jamaica Plain and other Boston neighborhoods. Today, the Southwest Corridor Park that runs through the Stony Brook neighborhood stands as a testament to the power of community activism. Leaves from Stony Brook Orange Line T station.
July 21 (also repeated September 8) – Hyde Square. Learn about 1840s Hyde Square when German and Irish immigrants transformed the neighborhood with their businesses, schools, and institutions. See how in the early 1960s, Hyde Square changed again when Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican immigrants transformed it into Boston’s first predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. This tour also takes us to the home of Maud Cuney Hare, a prominent music historian and one of only two black women students at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1890. You will also learn about the property currently housing the MSPCA’s Angell Memorial animal hospital which was once the site of the Perkins School for the Blind. The tour will also walk through the Sunnyside neighborhood, the site of homes built by philanthropist Robert Treat Paine from 1889 to 1899 as a “worker’s utopia†for working families. Assemble in front of Sorella’s, 388 Centre St.
July 28 (also repeated September 15) – Green Street. Laid out in 1836, the street played a key role in Jamaica Plain’s development, functioning as a residential, commercial, and transportation conduit in the lives of the district’s residents. Although Green Street was subdivided as early as 1851 for stores, factories and houses, it was not extensively developed until the late 1870s with construction continuing until the early 1900s. The Bowditch School was completed in 1892, and early in the 20th century the United States Post Office moved from its location on Call Street at Woolsey Square to its new location at the corner of Green and Cheshire Streets. Leaves from Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center, 640 Centre St.
August 4 (also repeated September 22) – Woodbourne. This neighborhood developed from 19th-century summer estates into a model suburban enclave. It contains examples representative of New England architecture with designs by local architects and builders. It also contains an unusual garden city model housing development by the Boston Dwelling House Company celebrating the centennial of its founding in 2012. Leaves from Bethel AME church steps, corner of Walk Hill and Wachusett Sts.
August 11 (also repeated September 29) – Jamaica Pond. Once a gathering point for Boston’s elite, the Pond had previously been put to industrial use as tons of ice were harvested there each winter. Learn about the movers and shakers such as Francis Parkman who made their homes on the Pond’s shores. Discover how the Pond was transformed from private estates and warehouses into the parkland we know today. Leaves from the Bandstand, Pond St. and Jamaicaway.
For more information, visit www.jphs.org.
