Photos by Jeffrey North Lone Tree Hill is a popular spot for a springtime stroll—but Belmont’s open space offers fall fascination as well. From asters to mountain mint, the site’s native plants put on a colorful autumn show.
By Jeffrey North Victory gardening in Belmont has never been more popular (local food production activity during World War II notwithstanding). One of the largest and oldest continuously active community gardens in the Boston area, Belmont’s Rock Meadow Victory Gardens consists of 132 garden plots of varying sizes, typically ranging from 12 by 12 feet to 50 by 50 feet. The gardens cover about three acres of land at the Rock Meadow Conservation Area along Mill Street, between Trapelo Road on the south and Winter Street on the north. After glaciers retreated 10,000 years ago, Native Americans burned the land [READ MORE]
By Jeffrey North and Joseph Hibbard A crew of 18 technicians, crew leaders, designer, and managers gathered on Lone Tree Hill early on the misty morning of March 15. They were there for the third and final day of their work season kick-off with a day of training on Belmont conservation land. The Land Management Committee (LMC) for Lone Tree Hill (LTH) had granted permission to allow the Parterre Ecological Services “Class of 2024” to conduct an invasive species removal training session for field technicians. Their target zone was a section of the southeast corner of the Great Meadow. The [READ MORE]
By Radha Iyengar Belmont’s Lone Tree Hill Conservation area benefited from another year of conservation, restoration, and stewardship, thanks mainly to the efforts of the Land Management Committee for Lone Tree Hill (LMC). Many Belmontonians and visitors enjoy this 119-acre conservation property for walking, biking, viewing wildlife, and being out in nature. The LMC was created through a memorandum of agreement between the town and McLean Hospital in 1999. The agreement outlined the development restrictions for the McLean Hospital campus. It also reserved approximately 119 acres of the campus as publicly accessible open space, including a new municipal cemetery, and [READ MORE]
By Jeffrey North On Earth Day 2023 (April 22), the Belmont Citizens Forum (BCF), in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, held its ninth annual Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day. (See “Volunteers Plant, Clean Up Lone Tree Hill,” BCF Newsletter, May/June 2023, for more information). Several dozen volunteers rolled up their sleeves, and gardening trowels in hand, planted 350 plugs of young native plants in the Great Meadow and reclaimed meadow areas of Belmont’s Lone Tree Hill Conservation Land in addition to planting 40 white pine saplings to replace the mature pines gradually lost to age and weather. The [READ MORE]
By Jeffrey North In 2020, the Land Management Committee for Lone Tree Hill (LMC) and the Judy Record Conservation Fund began a multi-year campaign to restore native plant communities in prioritized areas of the Lone Tree Hill conservation land. Step one in the restoration was to bring the invasive plant species under control. Planting natives would be a wasted effort and expense if they cannot compete with the pernicious plants that have come to occupy large swaths of our conservation lands and private yards. The work began with a broad brush, property-wide restoration survey conducted by ecological design professionals in [READ MORE]
By Jeffrey North Tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima), typically called ailanthus, is a rapacious deciduous tree native to China. It was first introduced into the United States when it was imported as an ornamental plant to Philadelphia in 1784 and later to New York in 1820. On the West Coast, immigrants brought the plant from Asia and planted it in California in the 1850s. The tree was initially valued as a fast-growing ornamental shade tree that was tolerant of poor soils and a broad range of site conditions. It tolerates vehicle exhaust and other air pollution quite nicely. It was widely planted [READ MORE]
By Dean Hickman and Leonard Katz Between Pleasant Street and Trapelo Road to the south, Concord Avenue to the north, and Mill Street to the west, Lone Tree Hill wraps around McLean Hospital and sits above Belmont, providing us with a peaceful and secluded mix of woods and meadows where we can escape the hustle and bustle of suburban life down below. It is also Belmont’s gateway to Rock Meadow on the other side of Mill Street as well as to the more secluded trails of the Western Greenway which head west into neighboring Waltham and Lexington. Anyone looking for [READ MORE]
By Jeffrey North A crew of field horticulture technicians returned to the Lone Tree Hill conservation area for their first visit in 2022 on May 20. Begun in late 2020, the work to enhance the ecological integrity of Belmont’s 80-acre conservation land site addresses the most egregious infestations of biodiversity-erasing invasive plant species. (See Restoration Projects Approved for Lone Tree Hill, BCF Newsletter, May 2021) The mission this time was to cut or pull and spray garlic mustard in bloom. As garlic mustard is one of the first plants to start actively growing in late March, leaves can be sprayed [READ MORE]
By Radha Iyengar On Saturday, April 30, a sunny but cool day, BCF, in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, held its eighth annual Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day. At the Pine Allee, volunteers planted 46 white pine saplings of which 40 saplings were store bought and 6 were transplants from Lone Tree Hill. The new plants replaced some of the Allee’s missing trees as well as some of the dead saplings from the 2017-2019 volunteer day plantings. At the other end of the property, the volunteers collected 11 bags of trash, one box of recyclables and six bags [READ MORE]
Lone Tree Hill Cleanup Saturday, April 30 Join us in stewarding Lone Tree Hill! After a two-year hiatus, the Belmont Citizens Forum, in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, is holding its eighth annual tree planting, cleanup, and trail maintenance day on Saturday, April 30, from 9 AM to noon. For more information, email bcfprogramdirector@gmail.com. Help complete the planting of saplings along the Pine Allee, cleaning up at the Mill Street parking lot and the Coal Road area, and removing invasive species on the property. Students can earn community service credits. Bounded by Concord Avenue, Pleasant Street, and Mill [READ MORE]
By Anne Paulsen, Martha Moore, and Heli Tomford with contributions from neighbors Nanny Almquist, Jacquie Dow, and other Belmont friends and committee colleagues who knew and worked with Joan Campbell. When Joan Louise Campbell died on December 15, 2016, Belmont lost a citizen whose life exemplified devotion to her community, especially its open spaces. Joan moved to Belmont with her parents in the late 1930s, and except for some years working as a librarian in Seattle, she lived in the same Prospect Street home for most of her 92 years. We are honoring Joan Campbell because of her involvement in [READ MORE]
By Joe Hibbard Take a walk on the north side of the Great Meadow at the Lone Tree Hill Conservation Land and you might notice some recent changes in the landscape. A broad area along both sides of the Pitch Pine Trail, which was until recently an impenetrable thicket of invasive plants, is being cleared and on its way to a healthier forest/meadow edge landscape. The clearing is part of a long-term project to restore ecological balance to degraded landscapes that are part of the Lone Tree Hill Conservation Land. The project is led by the Land Management Committee for [READ MORE]
By Jeffrey North Late last year, field technicians engaged by the Land Management Committee for Lone Tree Hill (LMC) and the Judy Record Conservation Fund began a multiyear campaign to restore select parcels of the Lone Tree Hill conservation land. These stewardship projects focused first on invasive plant removal at Area A1. Restoration specialists from Parterre Ecological Services hand-cut the bittersweet vines that were smothering the trees there and deployed a forestry mower to obliterate (if only temporarily) the buckthorn and multiflora rose. The forestry mowing radically altered the appearance of that portion of the property, prompting the few visitors to ask if [READ MORE]
By Jeffrey North In 2008 volunteers and government leaders in Mansfield convened, and more than 700 volunteers assembled to give that town a good spring cleaning. They formed a Keep America Beautiful (KAB) chapter the next year to continue their efforts. Now Belmont can do the same—drastically reduce the volume of refuse littering our public spaces and strengthen our sense of community by organizing volunteers and donations for a cleaner, greener place to live. Belmont can take its place among the 33 local nonprofit KAB chapters across Massachusetts (collectively KMB) that are making significant improvements to their communities. Litter attracts [READ MORE]
By Carolyn Bishop Asian bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), also known as Oriental bittersweet, is one of the most beautiful and problematic invasive plant species in our area. In the past, bittersweet was commonly sold in wreaths and floral arrangements, which were especially popular in the fall due to bittersweet’s brilliant yellow-shelled orange berries. Little did we know we were helping to spread a very invasive, damaging, non-native plant. Asian bittersweet was brought to the United States in the 1860s as an ornamental and for erosion control. Now it is found from Ontario and Quebec south through the Great Lakes states, from [READ MORE]
By Jeffrey North Invasive plant species are disrupting ecosystems globally and here in Belmont. Biological invasions are a leading cause of biodiversity loss and even species extinction, and invasive plants are permanently altering the ecology of our forests, fields, and gardens. This article is the first in a series on invasive plant species found in Belmont and the implications of their presence, spread, and ecological damage potential, as well as hopes for their removal and remediation. Garlic mustard (Alliara petiolata) is changing the character of the woodlands in the Northeast. It can outcompete native herbaceous species, depriving the natives of [READ MORE]
Belmont Citizens Forum’s Eighth Annual Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund scheduled for April 24, 2020, at the Lone Tree Hill parcel has been postponed to the fall due to the current Coronavirus shelter in place order. A big shout out to the good Samaritans who picked up the trash at the bottom of Coal Road, along Pleasant Street and at the Mill Street parking lot. Later this year we plan to complete the planting of trees along the Pine Allee. THANK YOU TO OUR CORPORATE SPONSORS Gold Level Sponsors Anne Mahon Realty [READ MORE]
By Mary Bradley The Belmont Historical Society hosted two events in September and October celebrating Belmont’s rich cultural and environmental history. Tracking the Wellington Hill Station through Time The Belmont Historical Society hosted an open house on September 15, 2019, to celebrate the completion of a series of repairs and restorations to the many-purposed Wellington Hill Station building the previous month. The station received a new cedar shingle roof and repairs to the decking and gingerbread trim, the interior plaster walls, and the lower wood sections. The roof was funded with Community Preservation Act (CPA) funding and donations from the [READ MORE]
View or download the May/June 2019 issue as a color PDF here, or read single articles below. Articles in this issue: New Plans for McLean Land Density is key issue as town considers proposals for two McLean campus parcels By Sue Bass Twenty years ago, Belmont voted to allow development on McLean Hospital land on Belmont Hill. Now McLean is coming back to the town with new proposals for two parcels of land that are still undeveloped. Read more. Composting in Belmont: Breaking it Down By Mary Bradley Composting is no longer just a backyard hobby for the ardent gardener. [READ MORE]