On Sunday, May 4, the Wakefield Charitable Trust hosted a lecture by Jeffrey Dukes, Assistant Prof. of Biology at U-Mass Boston, looking at the anticipated impacts of climate change on our local ecosystems. Following the lecture, Wakefield staff led a tour of the estate with Professor Dukes highlighting a number of potential impacts that a landscape such as the Wakefield property could […]

The Wakefield Estate is now home to a new hive of honey bees!  The bees will help pollinate the estate’s abundant array of flowers, trees and shrubs. Later this summer or fall Scott Harris, the hive’s keeper, will demonstrate how the bee hive works and include sampling of fresh honey from the hive!

Drenching rain couldn’t dampen the spirits of twenty Milton elementary school students for the first day of the Wakefield Explorers after-school program.  The four week pilot program, which kicked-off on April 28, will offer an outdoor educational experience to 4th grade students from four public Milton elementary schools. Each week students will cover a different environmental topic and recording their […]

To celebrate Arbor Day 2008 on Friday, April 25, the Wakefield staff hosted an intergenerational planting of five fruit trees in the apple orchard.  Seniors from Fuller Village joined intrepid youngsters from the neighborhood and planted four apple trees and one pear tree.  The five young trees are part of this year’s effort to reinvigorate the orchard through new plantings […]

Staff from the Wakefield Charitable Trust and the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain teamed up to host the year’s first pruning workshop at the Wakefield Estate on Saturday March 29th. After nearly a 45 minute overview of the theory and practive of pruning, nearly two dozen avid gardeners and budding arborists (no pun intended!) braved cold and windy conditions and […]

On the otherwise raining and dreary weekend of March 1-2, the Massachusetts Camellia Society (MCS) held its annual show and competition at the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain.  Erica Max, Landscape Supervisor at the Wakefield Charitable Trust, entered a number of Camellia blooms from Polly Wakefield’s collection.  Polly loved her Camellia collection and tended to them for many years.  She […]