• Crisp air, Crunching leaves, and golden trails await! Join a guided Fall Nature Walk led by a Boston Park Ranger, and explore Jamaica Pond and its inhabitants. Discover local wildlife, autumn plant life, and the history that shaped our parks into what we enjoy today! It's a perfect way to slow down and connect with nature this fall. 
• For more information on this event and future events hosted by the Park Rangers, visit the Boston Park Rangers homepage.

• Crisp air, Crunching leaves, and golden trails await! Join a guided Fall Nature Walk led by a Boston Park Ranger, and explore Scarborough Pond and its inhabitants. Discover local wildlife, autumn plant life, and the history that shaped our parks into what we enjoy today! It's a perfect way to slow down and connect with nature this fall. 
• For more information on this event and future events hosted by the Park Rangers, visit the Boston Park Rangers homepage.

• Crisp air, Crunching leaves, and golden trails await! Join a guided Fall Nature Walk led by a Boston Park Ranger, and explore Scarborough Pond and its inhabitants. Discover local wildlife, autumn plant life, and the history that shaped our parks into what we enjoy today! It's a perfect way to slow down and connect with nature this fall. 
• For more information on this event and future events hosted by the Park Rangers, visit the Boston Park Rangers homepage.

Please join the City of Boston for a ribbon cutting and community celebration for the completion of the Mattahunt Woods Urban Wild Restoration project. This will be a family-friendly event with activities for children and resources from various City of Boston Departments. This event is free and open to the public.

WHEN: Friday, October 24 from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

WHERE: Colorado Street entrance; 210 Colorado Street, Boston, MA 02126

Mattahunt Woods consists of over eight acres of secluded forested wetlands in Mattapan. The site provides important wildlife habitat and native vegetation, and mitigates the impacts of stormwater runoff, but had become degraded over time. The City launched a capital improvement project in early 2023 to study the site, engage the Mattapan community to inform the project, and design a new trail system and other site improvements. Project goals and outcomes include removing hazardous trees and invasive species and increasing native vegetation; preserving and enhancing on-site wetlands; creating a trail system throughout the property improving site access and wayfinding/signage; and enhancing the connection of the property to the nearby Mattahunt Elementary School. Site restoration and trail construction began in Summer 2024 in partnership between the City of Boston's Environment Department, Parks and Recreation Department, Office of Green Infrastructure, and PowerCorps Boston. 

To learn more, visit the project website or check out this video about the project!

Join artist Audrey Watkins at the intersection of River Street and Babson Street from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. on October 18, for Our Names, an interactive art project that asks, "Whose name would you put on a building?" Stop by to submit a name, pick up a card, and learn more about some of the figures currently named on the exterior of the Boston Public Library. Our Names by artist Audrey Watkins explores the practice of naming the Boston Public Library McKim Meade and White Building. When Charles Follen McKim designed the facades for the Boston Public Library in 1888, he included the names of 537 “writers and thinkers” that would be displayed to passersby for the next century. Of those 537 names, only 21 are not white European males. The goal of this project is twofold: to formally present the histories of those 21 names to the public through a research booklet, and to spark conversations on the names that today's Bostonians want to see on the library’s facade.

Through a series of activations during Mattapan Open Streets, a list of publicly gathered names derived from the prompt, “Whose name would you put on a building?” These activations will be a form of tabling, where a small portable gallery will show the content of the research booklet as well as the prompt, for passersby to engage in reflection on nearby monuments and imagine what a monument could be in 2025. 

Written and oral responses will be recorded, and translations of the prompt and the booklet will be provided. The artist will collect public response, including any further conversations sparked by the prompt. With consent, these responses will be gathered into an index for the booklet. This index and the booklet will be published together on an Internet Archive, as a lasting “re-monument” to McKim’s original design, that can easily be linked to existing articles on the building and the building’s facade.

Learn more about her project here.