Garden Club of the Back Bay Receives Beautify Boston Grant

The Garden Club of the Back Bay has successfully applied for a grant from the City of Boston to prune 67 Linden trees between Berkeley Street and Massachusetts Avenue, working with Bob Loree and The Boston Tree Company, in consultation with Boston’s Tree Warden Greg Mosman. The primary focus of the Garden Club for many years has been the care and planting of street trees of the Back Bay. There are about 1200 street trees in our neighborhood. For the last ten years the Garden Club, in consultation with the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, has been able to support an intense planting and pruning program.

We have, in this period of time, pruned almost every tree in Back Bay at least once. Our focus has been on the removal of dead wood, clearing branches back from traffic signs, shaping new or smaller trees, and raising of the canopy to allow for clear vehicle and pedestrian passage. Although we have done some pruning of the very large mature street trees in the Back Bay, we have not done this in a systematic way, due party to the increased expense of pruning the large trees and the urgent need to address the younger trees.

In 1910 Beacon Street, under the direction of Arthur Shurcliff and with help from residents led by Mrs. Lord, was planted with 350 Linden trees. Today there are only 67 Linden trees remaining. Many of these are very large trees now 112 years old, and some are plantings that were done in the 60’s to replace trees lost from the original planting. All of these 67 trees need attention.  The Garden Club will match the $5,000 Beautify Boston grant dollar for dollar, and begin Phase I of the project in spring, 2013.