Landscape Improvements in Franklin Park

The Franklin Park Master Plan (1991) details recommended improvements for the whole park and for individual sections. Some would be exciting to see realized today, while others don't match the use patterns and interests of park constituents. Check out the Master Plan and see what it says about your favorite corner of the park - and let us know what improvements you'd like to see.

Here's news about improvements happening in the park right now: 

Mother's Rest and the Wales Street Entrance in a neglected corner of the park at American Legion Highway and Blue Hill Avenue are passed by hundreds of golf course loop path walkers every day. Local preschools and many neighbors walk into the park at that entrance. Mother's Rest, a collection of benches overlooking a sweeping golf course view and an old stone fountain, is an inviting park sitting area.

Until this year, the site was marked with badly eroded paths, unkempt brush, and a patched, ugly fountain. A pro bono landscape team from the Community Outreach Group (COG) responded to FPC members seeking to restore the site. COG landscape historian, JoAnn Robinson, discovered that Mother's Rest dated back to the early 1900s and was the site of a "healing spring." When the water was discovered to be toxic, rather than healing, the city created the old stone fountain with piped water for drinking. Mother's Rest is not a name unique to Franklin Park, but an early nomenclature for playground or tot lot.

photo: old stone fountain and scruffy landscape prior to restoration. 

Today, new cobblestone gutters and regraded entrance paths have turned around decades of erosion. The benches at Mother's Rest have been painted and the masonry on the old fountain restored (it unfortunately can't be made a drinking fountain again). Tree work and shrub clearing have brought back a stunning view of wildflowers and native grasses that border the golf course (Frederick Law Olmsted's original sheep meadow). Maintenance on many of the majestic trees at the site has been done to ensure their longer term health.

FPC thanks the Emerald Necklace Conservancy's Justine Liff Memorial Fund, State Street Foundation, City of Boston's Small Changes grant program, Community Outreach Group, Carney Landscaping, Alpha Masonry, and FPC member, Patsy Williams, for funds, restoration work, and leadership!

The Playstead Basketball Courts are in the process of being repaired for the hundreds of neighborhood teens who use them year-round. This summer, thanks to a grant from the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation, the courts were resurfaced. The Boston Parks Department will install a second set of hoops this spring and FPC will purchase new nets for the hoops.

 

Past Successes: 

Removal of park eyesore: old cement bunker-style bathrooms erected for the original Playhouse in the Park in the 1970s. As the bathrooms became disused the building became a favorite spot for local drug dealers and graffiti artists. In 2004 Mayor Menino got Big Dig contractor, Suffolk Construction, to remove the structure for good. Demolition workers said there was enough cement for an 8-story hotel! 

 

Today the site has returned to woodlands after Franklin Park volunteers planted nearly 100 native shrubs and small trees, creating a model forest understory. If you're interested in local woodland flora, check out the list of what was planted.