Earth Day 2021
Earth Day is an opportunity to reflect on the environment around you, educate yourself and others on the health of the planet, and take action. In a regular year, Earth Day would bring 100 volunteers to The Greenway to join a park-wide community cleanup. While we won’t be celebrating in large groups yet, we are delighted to welcome back a youth group from the Holy Trinity Armenian Church of Greater Boston to volunteer on horticultural projects in the park and learn about our commitment to sustainability along the way!
Last year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and took a deep dive into the Conservancy’s vigilant water conservation practices and native plant care, shared our commitment to energy-efficient LED lighting and increasing our fleet of electric vehicles, and announced plans to further our commitment to sustainability through a carbon footprint analysis and climate change resiliency plan for The Greenway.
In 2020 the Conservancy commissioned a Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment and Asset Management Plan. Located one block west of Boston’s downtown waterfront, The Greenway faces significant and growing risks of damage and disruption from climate change and extreme storm events.
This Plan presents a roadmap for the Conservancy to protect vulnerable assets and manage risks from the effects of climate change and examines the Conservancy’s carbon footprint and the park’s natural carbon stocks. The Plan gives an overview of the climate risks that Boston will continue to face and offers prioritized recommendations for how the Conservancy can protect The Greenway’s cherished assets.
With this Vulnerability Assessment and Asset Management Plan, the Conservancy is proud to continue its sustainability leadership. For more than 10 years the Conservancy has maintained our park landscape organically, introduced pollinator habitat, and even installed the first beehives in a Boston public park. We look forward to continuing this work as Boston faces the ongoing challenges of climate change.
In 2020, the Conservancy also announced the launch of our Interactive Bloom Tracker, a new initiative that will increase visitors’ engagement with Boston’s beloved public park through interactive geo visualizations.
The Greenway Interactive Bloom Tracker lets visitors locate and learn more about flowering perennials across the park. Visitors can see which Greenway flowers are typically in bloom during any time of the year, in addition to names of and details about each species. Created in partnership with WorkReduce, this interactive map graphs more than 300,000 data points and over 800 varieties of plants.
April showers have already brought us colorful signs of spring in the park! Whether you’re exploring our park in person or from home, we invite you to find your flower on The Greenway and discover what’s in bloom in celebration of Earth Day!
