Open Space – Belmont Citizens Forum

New Connections Coming to Mystic Greenways

Environment, July/August 2024, Newsletter, Open Space Comments Off

Jun 252024

New Connections Coming to Mystic Greenways

By Isaiah Johnson It’s a great time to enjoy Greater Boston’s parks and paths as we head into the middle of summer. Whether you walk, bike, or run, the Mystic Greenways are great places to get outside and enjoy fresh air. At the Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA), we are excited to see the path network along the Mystic River grow more connected every year, linking parks and greenways from the Mystic Lakes to Boston Harbor. The vision behind the Mystic Greenways is to connect 25 miles of paths, improve hundreds of acres of parklands, and engage thousands of community [READ MORE]

Profiles in Belmont: Farmer Tim

Environment, May/June 2024, Newsletter, Open Space Comments Off

Apr 302024

By Elissa Ely Choosing a favorite vegetable or melon, if you happen to be Farmer Tim Carroll, is like choosing a favorite child. If he’s eating a cantaloupe from his farm, cantaloupe is his favorite. When he’s eating a cherry tomato, the cantaloupe steps aside. “I’m not a fennel guy,” he says, but with such respect that no fennel could resent him. There are dozens and dozens of vegetable children in Farmer Tim’s world. Since 2015, his Dudley, MA, farm has grown multiple varieties of up to 50 kinds of produce each August through October. The season starts aboveground with [READ MORE]

How to be a Biodiversity Builder

Environment, May/June 2024, Open Space, Plants, Stormwater, Water Quality Comments Off

Apr 302024

by Jean Devine An open mind, eagerness to learn new things, a willingness to work with peers from different schools, and a tolerance for hot weather, a bit of rain, and getting dirty are all it takes to be a Biodiversity Builder. Youth don’t join Biodiversity Builders (BB) to fill out their resume. They join because they’re curious about nature and maybe gardening, they worry about climate change, and they want to do something positive to help the planet. Youth who become Biodiversity Builders learn how to solve environmental and societal challenges, get down and dirty removing invasive plants and [READ MORE]

Restoration Resumes on Lone Tree Hill

Environment, Lone Tree Hill, May/June 2024, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants Comments Off

Apr 302024

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]

Beavers vs Us: Who Manages Stormwater Best?

Environment, May/June 2024, Newsletter, Open Space, Stormwater Comments Off

Apr 302024

Beavers vs Us: Who Manages Stormwater Best?

By Anne-Marie Lambert There’s a lot of complexity but not much bureaucracy involved when beavers take action to manage stormwater. Beavers don’t follow many rules and regulations to slow down a brook’s flow to a prescribed amount or filter pollutants like phosphates or nitrates. They don’t submit maintenance plans for what they will do differently when large rainstorms or new pollutants arrive. Beavers don’t wait for permit approvals or make decisions based on a checklist of laws and regulations. Beavers have evolved to build their homes across brooks to create whole new ecosystems that support many species that have evolved [READ MORE]

Vision for a Better Belmont: Chris Ryan

Construction and Housing, May/June 2024, Open Space, Parking, Traffic, Transit Comments Off

Apr 302024

This is the fourth of a new series of interviews with Belmont leaders about their vision for Belmont’s future. Jeffrey North conducted this interview. It has been edited for length and clarity. – Ed. Chris Ryan has served as Belmont’s town planner and director of planning and building (OPB) since September 2023. With more than 30 years of experience in city planning and economic development, Chris has worked at the town, city, county, regional, and state levels in the public sector in at least 10 communities and the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission; the Metropolitan Area Planning Council; and the Central [READ MORE]

Profiles in Belmont: Phil Thomas

March/April 2024, Open Space Comments Off

Mar 012024

By Elissa Ely “One ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs or a bee makes honey.” – Marcus Aurelius There is so much we could say about Phil Thomas. We could talk about his distinguished career in high technology, which followed his distinguished career in Naval Intelligence. We could talk about growing up oceanside in Florida, where his father worked as a photographer for NASA and John Glenn visited the house. We could talk about his childhood hopes of becoming the next Mickey Mantle (stymied only, perhaps, by height). We could also talk about Phil’s [READ MORE]

Lone Tree Hill Saw Improvements in 2023

Environment, January 2024, Lone Tree Hill, McLean, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants Comments Off

Jan 052024

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]

Japanese Culture Center Comes to Belmont Hill

January 2024, Newsletter, Open Space Comments Off

Jan 052024

Japanese Culture Center Comes to Belmont Hill

By Fred Bouchard Drive up Concord Avenue from Belmont Center this winter, glance left after the big curve, and you’ll see an eye-catching sight behind the driveway opposite Sumner Lane; cherry trees and rhododendrons, a garden, and—rising behind the house—a half-built, huge-timbered barn. What, a barnraising on Belmont Hill? This property belonged to the late Anne Allen and now bears a conservation restriction encompassing 3.3 acres of forest, fields, and meadows. Allen donated this property’s conservation restriction and the Maple Allee conservation restriction across the street to Belmont in 2004. These two conservation restrictions contribute to the town’s open spaces [READ MORE]

Opinion: Why Pay Property Taxes When You Can Get a Tax Break?

Newsletter, November/December 2023, Open Space Comments Off

Nov 012023

Opinion: Why Pay Property Taxes When You Can Get a Tax Break?

By Max Colice Over the past 10 years, the Belmont Country Club has received tax breaks totaling more than $4 million on its property tax bills thanks to a state law called Chapter 61B. Chapter 61B allows country clubs and other private nonprofit organizations to get a 75% discount on property taxes for recreational land, including golf courses. Belmont taxpayers pay for this enormous tax benefit. That’s because when one taxpayer’s bill goes down, everyone else’s bill goes up to offset that reduction. In other words, every taxpayer in Belmont has been subsidizing the Belmont Country Club’s property taxes for [READ MORE]

Lone Tree Hill Goes Native with Plantings

Environment, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants, September/October 2023 Comments Off

Sep 012023

Lone Tree Hill Goes Native with Plantings

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]

UMass Field Station Update

July/August 2023, Newsletter, Open Space Comments Off

Jun 302023

UMass Field Station Update By John Dieckmann In the January/February issue of the Belmont Citizens Forum Newsletter, there was a brief article on the status of the UMass Field Station on Beaver Street in Waltham. The city of Waltham acquired the property from UMass last year. The city planned to issue four requests for proposals (RFPs) covering different parts of the property for potential users to respond to. To date, one of these RFPs was issued in February, covering about 13 acres of farm land, the main building, and several outbuildings. According to Stacey Daley, executive director of the Waltham [READ MORE]

Wild Play is Parenting in the Great Outdoors

July/August 2023, Newsletter, Open Space Comments Off

Jun 302023

Wild Play is Parenting in the Great Outdoors

By David Sobel Are you concerned about the academification, indoorification, and digitalization of your child’s life? Especially now, post-pandemic, when most children were forced to be indoors and plopped down in front of screens for much of their schooling? I felt the same way, even a couple of decades ago when I was raising my children in rural New Hampshire. As a family, we avoided television until my children were about eight years old, though we did borrow DVDs from the library for family viewing. And I am thankful that my wife and I didn’t have to deal with the [READ MORE]

Unauthorized Bike Route and Vandalism at Lone Tree Hill

Bicycles and bike paths, McLean, Newsletter, Open Space, Town Committee Meetings Comments Off

Apr 302023

Unauthorized Bike Route and Vandalism at Lone Tree Hill

An unauthorized bike route off the Hillside Trail on the Lone Tree Hill, Belmont Conservation Land (LTH) property was reported on April 21, 2023. The route goes down a hill, over a rock ledge and lands below on a very steep hillside. The builders of the route cut down trees, broke branches, removed rocks and vegetation (trees and native perennial trout lily) from the hillside and excavated dirt by digging and leaving dangerous pits. There has been earlier unauthorized bike activity at Lone Tree Hill, but this is the most dangerous and damaging. At the ninth annual LTH volunteer day [READ MORE]

Lone Tree Hill Restoration Hit 2022 Milestones

Environment, January/February 2023, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants Comments Off

Jan 032023

Lone Tree Hill Restoration Hit 2022 Milestones

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]

Farewell to Royal Road’s Dirt Jumps

Bicycles and bike paths, January/February 2023, Newsletter, Open Space Comments Off

Jan 032023

By Vincent Stanton, Jr. In late July 2022, the town dismantled the dirt bike track built by Belmont teens on town land between Royal Road and the Fitchburg Line (see “Whither the Royal Road Woods?” BCF Newsletter, January/February 2022.) The bike track, originally constructed in 2020 shortly after the parks were closed because of the pandemic, was expanded in 2022 by a different group of teens. After winter and spring storms, which eroded the earthen jumps, it needed a complete rebuild. The 2022 bike track network at one point extended across the wetlands at the bottom of Royal Road (a [READ MORE]

Preserve Belmont’s Leafy Leviathans

Environment, January/February 2023, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants Comments Off

Jan 032023

By Fred Bouchard Tawny branches reach skyward around its diminished crown like a monk’s tonsure. Strafed by ligneous crows’ feet and tagged with a bowie knife by ”Oliver” (World War veteran?), its trunk is knobbled with rusts and growths. Golden wreaths of lichen encrust its bolus. The copper beech standing sentinel opposite the stone rail trestle in Belmont Center bears silent witness to a century and a half of local history. It was a mere sapling, perhaps part of the project when H. H. Richardson’s firm rebuilt the Unitarian Universalist Church in 1890. Wellington Station marked the adjacent train stop [READ MORE]

School Claims Parking is “Educational Use”

Climate Change, Construction and Housing, Environment, January/February 2023, Open Space, Parking Comments Off

Jan 032023

School Claims Parking is “Educational Use”

By Justin Roe Belmont Hill School submitted their long-awaited plan for the Belmont Hill woodlands area to the planning board in October. The response from Belmont’s residents was instantaneous and overwhelming in opposing the proposal. Within three weeks, Belmont’s Select Committee and Planning Board have received hundreds of letters voicing town opposition to the project. A petition in opposition has attracted over 2,200 signatures, and hundreds of lawn signs and banners are popping up in every district in Belmont. School action groups from Lexington and Waltham are taking an active role. All within a few weeks. The school presented its [READ MORE]

Letters to the Editor: Belmont Hill Plans, Bike Trails

Bicycles and bike paths, Bike Paths, Climate Change, Environment, November 2022, Open Space, Parking, Plants Comments Off

Oct 312022

To the Editor: New England in the fall is renowned for its beauty—the trees are blazes of color, birds, squirrels, and other animals are busily preparing for winter, and the occasional whiff of woodsmoke floats in the air. Driving up Prospect Street, one is met with the pleasant sight of the pristine lawns and stately brick buildings of the Belmont Hill School—a self-described educator of “men of good character,” where “boys are expected to collaborate and become part of something larger than themselves.” Which is why it’s such a shame that the Belmont Hill School is apparently ignoring its own [READ MORE]

Why Care About Removing Invasive Plants?

Environment, November 2022, Open Space, Plants Comments Off

Oct 312022

Why Care About Removing Invasive Plants?

By Joseph Hibbard and Jeffrey North The Belmont Citizens Forum Newsletter has been printing articles about the perils and poisons of non-native invasive plant species on these pages for years. Readers have learned that garlic mustard changes the chemistry of the soil to gain an advantage over other plant species in forest and edge areas. Our article on black swallowwort described that plant’s deadly toxicity to Monarch butterfly larvae that mistakenly consume it instead of nourishing native milkweed. We have described how Asiatic bittersweet rapidly climbs native trees, blocks the sunlight, and eventually topples the tree while changing our viewsheds. [READ MORE]

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