Spring reflections from the Rose Kennedy Greenway and a brief swing South …

Took a nice trip in May to North Carolina to visit old friends, who are among the many retirees from New England who’ve settled down there.

The Calabash dinner doesn’t quite equal a North Shore fishermen’s platter (though it does include the novelty of fried oysters rather than our Ipswich clams).

And the reminders of the Confederacy and Jim Crow are a bit too palpable.

Especially at the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, NC (site of the famous Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in) where a guide confides that internal staff conversations can’t help but draw comparisons between the racist local police of the sixties South and the ICE-y excesses of today.

But it’s warmer in the Carolinas than at home (at least in the months before it gets too hot). The area’s marshes, intracoastal waters and small towns offer a kind of Southern charm … even along the Cape Fear River (see both movies). And oh, the jasmine smell. Plus, breathe in the dreamy Airlie Gardens in Wilmington, Coker Arboretum at UNC Chapel Hill and the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh.

Which all brings me back to the Rose Kennedy Greenway (RKG) …

Back/down home

I’ve been monitoring plant blooming in a couple specific “parcels” on the RKG since 2023.

2026 is a special year at the Greenway. Given its deep associations with the US Revolution, Boston expects huge crowds to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country’s independence in July. An international fleet of tall ships will visit Boston Harbor for the birthday. And Boston will be the big city as the small, not-so-nearby Foxborough, MA plays the real host to seven FIFA World Cup soccer matches in June and July at the stadium that is home to the NFL New England Patriots. (Notably, some international soccer fans have suggested they’ll skip World Cup games in the US due to violent ICE raids in immigrant communities and xenophobic American foreign policies.)

In conjunction with these big events, the Greenway has embarked on major rehab projects. Chiefly, the projects aim to lay new permeable paths that will soak up rainwater and reduce flooding and add brighter lighting to keep the park safer after dark.

On a recent visit, fothergilla showed off prolific white flowers behind the construction fencing along Pearl Street on Parcel 21. Tulips bloomed mixed red-and-white and mixed red-and-yellow flowers through the construction mess. The rich blooms that festooned the construction fencing attested to the striking beauty of the the strip of garden, not just in the midst of a buzzing city, but in a construction site to boot.

For me and the parcels I watch, the improvements have mostly meant that interesting hidden infrastructure is newly visible through construction fences and utility pits in the ground.

Look up

Near the end of April, I did one RKG observation visit in conjunction with a birding tour from Greenway resident birder Anthony Laquidara. He noted that the RKG is on the East Atlantic Flyway for birds so more species are seen on this strip than even in the city’s famous older parks, the Boston Common and the Public Garden.

He said sparrows sing louder on RKG than in other places like the Midwest because of the ambient noise in the big city that they need to sing over.

On another recent visit, the water was finally turned on after a winter of running dry. A sticker of the Pride flag had appeared briefly at the bubbler near the ticket offices in the harbor parcels, but was soon scraped away.

By mid-May, the Rings Fountain was back. But the day was too chilly for the usual gaggle of kids running in and out of the synchronized water displays.

A month or so earlier, the Greenway was home to a 76-foot gondola Ferris wheel. The “Frostival” Ferris wheel running near the harbor parcels in the early winter reminded me partly of The Third Man and Vienna, but also of the touristy Eye in London and the apparent renaissance of Ferris wheels. The Frostival wheel was taken down in early spring.

Beyond the tunnel vent in Parcel 22, mural artists have been visible on a crane platform assessing the progress on their mural in Dewey Square. Rixy and her all-woman team are painting the Dewey Square Mural, The Midnight Ride. The mural references Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride by featuring the lesser-known midnight ride made by Sybil Ludington in 1777, who allegedly rode 44 miles on horseback to alert American troops of an impending British attack.

Garden variety

Back to my usual rounds, my wife’s paver has looked particularly sharp this year, as others nearby were crumbling and fading. The Greenway is replacing some of these pavers with a bolder block lettering. Clunkier-looking but perhaps more lasting.

Further on, a new sign payed tribute to removed taxodium trees and planned replacements. The Greenway folks assure us the taxodium trees will “continue giving back” to The Greenway. “Their wood will be upcycled into mulch, returning nutrients to the soil and supporting the next generation of plants.”

The blossoms of bigflower magnolias showed their stunning faces (rare in these Northern parts compared with NC, for example).

Tulips bloomed red flowers near a new black metal gate rising from both sides of existing path near Purchase Street.

On Parcel 22, the Dewey Square parcel, alliums showed tightly closed new buds in the area between the mural vent and Congress Street. On the Atlantic Ave. side of the vent, swaths of daffodils (poet’s narcissus?) flowered for a few weeks, many white, others yellow, then reverted en masse to bloomless drying foliage.

Not much flowering in the edible garden, toward the highway wall. Honeysuckle vine started coming alive on most recent visit. Virginia bluebells showed some blue flowers. Nothing from the sweat peas yet.

Near the Federal Reserve Plaza, quince, which had showed beautiful peach-colored flowers a few weeks earlier (against a backdrop of porta-potties). But the blossoms seemed very short-lived. Gone a few visits later.

Common blue violets flowered purplish. Humble but nice.

In the Parcel 22 beds along Atlantic, the robust boxwoods have been reshaped as topiary—undoubtedly interesting for fans of such geometric pruning. The beds around them were largely dug up for a planned new set of plantings, though the old Russian sage’s grey foliage and society garlic’s pink flowers have been visible along Atlantic Ave.

Word is, the RKG will soon boast the formal botanical collections, scientific research frameworks and institutional accreditations required for formal status as an “arboretum.” Interest is high, as evidenced in this Reddit thread.

One bright orange syringe cap sat on the ground, reinforcing that the Greenway is above all, an urban public park. A beautiful one.

A bit of background: For more than 30 years, I was the executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education. In 2023, I left the editorship and began volunteering in phenology at the Rose Kennedy Greenway and in English language teaching at the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Mass. Also see, for example, A Volunteer Life and Back to Green and Witnessing Beauty but Wilting in Empathy and Lilies, Rosemary and the Bleeding Hearts.