Bee and butterfly populations are in decline in Connecticut. To address this problem, to lure them in, and to increase their numbers, the Millbrook Garden Club created a pollinator garden at the Sharon Audubon Center. At this site, the garden club…
The Bradley and Leila Barnes Grounds & Victorian Gardens are part of the historic Barnes Museum Homestead. Located in the heart of downtown Southington, Connecticut, the property was purchased in 1836 by Bradley Barnes’ grandparents, Amon and…
Have you ever judged a neighborhood by its trees? I have. Without even realizing it, I've felt happy walking down an alley of green trees in the summer, in the filtered light of their giant canopies. I've also felt that a block is gloomy or deserted…
A mosaic path winds its way through the Bassett Street Park, past the bushes on the edges and the donated sculpture memorial in the lot’s center. The summer the path was made, every volunteer from the neighborhood designed a square. They used…
Jody K. is quick to say she’s not a leader. “I’m more of a really good follower,” she protests. But while Jody may not have captained the initial push to transform the vacant lot at 93 Shepard Street into a Greenspace, she has been the site’s most…
It started because of a shared problem: the drug activity and prostitution in the abandoned double lot on Saltonstall and Lloyd. Adeli D. lived next door at the time, and remembers having to yell at the dealers who wandered through her driveway past…
On an early Monday autumn morning, with leaves changing colors and dropping across the city of New Haven, I found myself driving through The Hill neighborhood in the Urban Resources Initiative (URI) delivery truck, the bed full of 300-pound trees…
Founded in 1876, W. Atlee Burpee & Company grew to be the largest seed company in the world by the early twentieth century. In 1924 the company advertised a contest in its Seed Annual asking customers to write in about “What Burpee’s Seeds Have Done…
