News
Our renovation of the town common in Manchester-by-the-Sea is nearly complete.
The new landscape provides a welcoming stopping place for residents and visitors, complements the town’s historic structures, and improves universal access to the town hall. By replacing asphalt with permeable pavers and reducing the total paved area, it also helps protect the waters of Sawmill Creek and Manchester Harbor.
A new garden opened today at Garden in the Woods, the 45-acre home of the Native Plant Trust and one of New England’s outstanding public gardens. The Curtis Cottage Garden honors the legacy of Will Curtis and Dick Stiles, the garden’s creators, by transforming the foundations of their cottage into a domestically scaled garden where visitors can spend time with native plants.
Wolf Landscape Architecture designed the garden in collaboration with the Trust’s expert staff, laying out its paths, walls, and plantings. The garden’s plants will extend the surrounding Woodland Garden’s season of bloom late into the summer. Even in its first spring, the Curtis Cottage Garden provides a quiet stopping place and a foreground to dramatic woodland views.
At the fall Town Meeting, citizens of Manchester-by-the-Sea approved plans to make the Town Common greener and more welcoming. The design by Wolf Landscape Architecture includes realigned walks, ADA-responsive access to the Town Hall’s front door, new benches and lighting, and native shade trees. The landscape’s restoration will be complete in 2020.
On January 13, the Ecological Landscape Alliance and Wellesley College will present “Large Scale Landscapes: Exploring Ecological Options.” During the day-long symposium, speakers representing colleges and universities, public gardens, conservation organizations, and public-private partnerships will explore innovations in the design and management of new and historic landscapes whose scale presents special challenges and opportunities.
Wolf Landscape Architecture is proud to be a sponsor of this important and timely event.
Work is complete on the third phase of the renovation of the Boylston Street Border in Boston's Public Garden. Three quarters of the border's 900-foot length now benefits from improved drainage, reinvigorated plantings, and inviting places to sit.
The project's phased implementation has allowed our team to improve each year on the work that came before. This year we fine-tuned the planting palette, adjusted the soil mix, revised the transplant specifications, improved the way benches are installed, and eased curb installation by providing the granite quarry with full-size templates. These changes helped achieve an improved outcome at no additional cost.
Construction of Phase 4 will begin in September 2016. To see project updates, to become a member, or to learn how to sponsor a bench or a tree, please visit the Friends of the Public Garden online.
On November 12, the Trustees of Reservations hosted the Ecological Landscape Alliance's annual Season's End Summit at Castle Hill on the Crane Estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts. The program went from strength to strength, with lectures by Tom Benjamin, Laura Kuhn, Ann Kearsley, and Lucinda Brockway as well as a panel discussion with Theresa Sprague, Miles Connors, and Michele Grzenda.
But there's nothing like seeing the real thing. So after lunch, while the morning's fog burned off, the Trustees' Operations Manager Bob Murray led a tour of Castle Hill's landscape and showed us how sustainable design is supporting historic restoration. Find out more about the Trustees' work at Castle Hill here.
The second phase of our renovation of the Boylston Street Border in Boston's Public Garden is nearly complete. Working with landscape architect Deb Howe, arborist Norm Helie, and civil engineer John Cusack, we have moved and planted trees and shrubs, improved drainage, and made space for two more benches. In the weeks ahead we'll add more perennials and bulbs, and the last tree will be planted early next spring.
The multi-year rejuvenation of the entire 900 foot length of the the Border is a project of the Friends of the Public Garden, who have posted a project update here. The Friends work in partnership with Boston's Parks Department to care for the Garden, the Common, and the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, and membership is open to all.