♪ [water flowing] ♪ [traffic bustling] Now, urban Boston is not the kind of place where you usually find me.

But, if you'll stick around for a few minutes, I'll show you why we're here.

♪ ♪ [breeze blowing softly] WILLEM: Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

Now, we're in a place today that's not quite as wild as you may be used to seeing with us, but doesn't matter.

We're at a place called the Emerald Necklace in Boston, Massachusetts, and I have the pleasure of being joined today by none other than Ms. Jeanie Knox, the Director of External Affairs of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy.

[chuckling] Yes, I got it right!

Jeanie, it's a pleasure.

JEANIE: It's my pleasure as well.

WILLEM: You know more about this place than anybody else in the world, right?

JEANIE: Not exactly, but I'm one of the biggest fans, I think, of the Emerald Necklace and what it has to offer.

♪ WILLEM: The Emerald Necklace is a park system that stretches from Back Bay in Boston all the way to Dorchester.

Nine distinct parks connect seven miles of walking trails, woodlands, and ponds.

♪ Every year, more than a million people come to the Emerald Necklace looking for a quiet place in the middle of the city.

JEANIE: It's lovely.

It has something for everyone.

Every park, I think, has its own personality.

And, you can find wilderness areas, you can find ball fields, and lots in between.

WILLEM: Beautiful.

So, we'll go take a look at it.

JEANIE: Great!

♪ With Jeanie's help, we're going to meet people along the way who know the parks and love to share stories about them.

[fast-flowing water] [chatter] We begin at the Back Bay Fens, where Dan Herzlinger and Basia Nazarewicz volunteer their time as docents.

[distant traffic] WILLEM: Dan, I see what they mean.

Once you get in the park, you're not in the city anymore, all of a sudden.

DAN: Absolutely, yeah.

WILLEM: You feel really DAN: Yeah.

Yeah.

WILLEM: That's great.

DAN: So, welcome to the Back Bay Fens park.

This is one of the parks in the Emerald Necklace.

WILLEM: There are nine of them, right?

DAN: There are nine parks.

There's over a thousand acres of parkland as part of that Emerald Necklace park system.

And it’s not the White Mountains, but it's our little sliver of nature right in the middle of the City of Boston.

[distant traffic] DAN: So, there's three, sort of, property owners along the Emerald Necklace.

There's the City of Boston; pieces of it are owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and then, the city of Brookline as well.

So, it's a whole necklace right through the middle of the city.

It's our little piece of nature and our escape from the hustle and bustle of city life.

♪ [insects calling] WILLEM: And before we go any further, I need to take you back to 1878.

That's when work on the Emerald Necklace began.

It was this man, Frederick Law Olmsted, who saw the parks as: the self preserving instinct of civilization.

Olmsted, who's considered the father of American landscape architecture, designed parks throughout North America, including Central Park in New York City.

It took nearly 20 years to bring his vision of the Emerald Necklace to life.

♪ DAN: He was really guided by two, sort of, fervent beliefs in his design of parks, and the first was that parks should be democratic places where anybody could come and spend time and get away from the city life.

And the second fervent belief he had was that parks were places where people could find spiritual renewal in that escape from city life.

So, he was designing parks at a time in America when there was industrialization of American cities, and you had all these city workers and, surprisingly, there actually weren't that many parks for city dwellers to get away from the city life in those days.

♪ WILLEM: I mentioned earlier that the Necklace is made up of nine parks.

Six of those are Olmsted's.

The other three Boston Common, the Public Garden, and the Commonwealth Avenue Mall were already in place.

♪ [gravel crunching] Basia Nazarewicz lives near the Back Bay Fens.

She volunteers for the Emerald Necklace Conservancy and, like Olmsted, is a landscape architect.

WILLEM: What do you think of what Olmsted did here?

BASIA: I think he did a fantastic job.

And, what’s interesting is that I think that design and landscape architecture, in general, are making a full circle back to, sort of, his idea of the sustainable design.

He didn't call it sustainable design, but the leading thought in landscape design and landscape architecture right now is sort of to make things look natural and make them function as self-sustaining ecosystems.

And I think that's the thought that Olmsted had when he was designing his parks; he wanted to make them naturalistic.

Obviously, this whole landscape here is very heavily engineered, but his idea was to make it look natural and make it feel as if you were somewhere in the wild.

♪ WILLEM: Besides a natural place for city dwellers to retreat to, Olmsted saw another purpose for the Emerald Necklace.

The Muddy River, which threads its way through several of the parks, was once a tidal river and a place where Boston dumped its garbage and sewage.

DAN: When there was a high tide and rainwater coming in from a storm, this whole area would be would be flooded.

And so, there were periodic floods and there was a lot of sewage and waste in those days.

They didn't have the systems we have today.

And so, he was brought in to fix the flooding problem and to address the sewage and waste problem.

And so, he redesigned this whole area the Muddy River and another river that originally fit into the Muddy River the Stony Brook.

He came in and he was charged with fixing those problems.

♪ WILLEM: Which he did, despite some objections that too much effort and money would be spent creating the Emerald Necklace.

♪ Now, more than 100 years later, people are still drawn to its parks.

DAN: Olmsted's vision has changed a lot.

You'll see, as we walk through the park, his underlying vision.

He did not like to see any sort of outside human influence in the park.

Although his parks were designed to look natural, he didn't want any sort of statues or extravagant flowers or that kind of stuff in his parks.

♪ WILLEM: Well, I hope Olmsted can forgive us; people enjoy the statues and the flowers that adorn his parks.

♪ When Basia moved to the United States from Poland, it was the Necklace that caught her eye.

BASIA: This park definitely was the reason why I moved here because, when I was moving to Boston, I didn't really know much about it, and I looked at the map and I was trying to identify where the parks are.

I really wanted to live close to a park just to be able to go around and go for a walk or have, you know just sit down on the grass and have a picnic.

I looked at the map of Boston and looked at how the Emerald Necklace winds through it, and I said, Oh.

This part actually makes a little bend.

And so, it means that this neighborhood is surrounded on three sides by park.

I said, I want to live right here.

It's a great way to just kind of move about Boston.

WILLEM: Yeah.

Saturday morning is pretty busy here.

♪ DAN: I can tell you from my own experience that, living in the city, it does wonders just to take a break and take a nice walk through these parks just to get away after a long day at work when you're tired and stressed.

Coming to the park I feel the stress kind of melting away.

♪ [insects buzzing] WILLIEM: Well, I've had the good fortune to come across Mary Connolly, who's walking in park on a Saturday morning with her husband.

MARY: Yes.

WILLEM: From Weymouth?

MARY: From Weymouth, Massachusetts.

WILLEM: And what are you doing here?

MARY: Well, we're here to go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

We’re meeting our daughter at 11, and today, we're here early, so we decided to come over and take a walk.

WILLEM: That's great.

This is your first time in the park?

MARY: No, but it's my first time in many, many years in the park.

It's beautiful.

We found the rose garden and thoroughly enjoyed that.

It was beautiful.

WILLEM: I guess it's just been refurbished or something rebuilt.

MARY: The fountain is beautiful.

The cherubs are beautiful.

It's very peaceful in there.

[chuckling] WILLEM: Cherubs!

MARY: They're beautiful.

Yeah, they're very beautiful.

[both laughing] WILLEM: That's great.

Well, we're both here for the same reason then: just to walk around and take a look at it.

MARY: It's nice to have a place of green and serenity in the middle of the city.

It's a delight to come here and see it.

♪ WILLEM: We leave Back Bay Fens and move on to Olmsted Park.

♪ We meet Gerry Wright.

He walks these pathways nearly every day and has for more than 50 years, or 192 years, depending on whom you ask.

Now, Olmsted.

You do Olmsted as a performance, right?

A one-man show?

GERRY: Yes, I do.

[acting as Olmsted] At 192, I speak to people as Olmsted.

WILLEM: He lived to be 192?

GERRY: Well, his spirit is still alive, so that's how I do it.

[chuckling] WILLEM: Okay.

Right.

GERRY: So, right now, as we look back, the importance of this park because, firstly, it was a sanitary problem and Olmsted was always interested in answering sanitary problems.

WILLEM: Good idea.

GERRY: So, today, what might he be interested in?

Well, he'd be interested in having clean air and a place where people could come after work and feel they're free.

In fact, he said that the most important quality of a park was a sense of enhanced freedom for everyone at all times when you walk into a park.

[distant traffic] WILLEM: Olmsted is kind of a central figure in 19th-century America, right?

GERRY: Absolutely.

WILLEM: So, what's so important?

GERRY: Well, I think he's the most important person of 19th-century America.

WILLEM: The most?

GERRY: Absolutely.

Because what's the number one problem today?

Preservation of natural resources.

I mean, with all the technology you know, all the technological developments of the 19th century are now passé.

WILLEM: Aye.

That’s true.

GERRY: Right?

Everybody carries a whole world around in their hand, but everybody still needs clean air to breathe and fresh water to drink, and those are going to become, to me, and right now are the ultimate questions for the future of humanity... because without it, there will not be human beings.

WILLEM: And this was Olmsted’s philosophy?

GERRY: Yes, exactly.

This is where he was focusing right here!

That's why he feels this was most important work that he had done.

For a couple of reasons.

Reason 1 is the sanitary.

And he argued with people.

They didn't want him to take it on.

It was too much work.

He says, You'll get your park, but let's first answer the problem of sanitation.

WILLEM: Yeah, yeah.

GERRY: So that was his thinking.

And, to me, that thinking is as important today as it was in the 19th century.

♪ ♪ [distant water flowing] It's very interesting that these lilies some summers, they don't come out as much as they have today, but... just priceless.

Priceless.

And then you can... you used to in the spring and I don't know what it's doing but you could see where the sunfish came and made their homes by pushing away the pebbles.

And I was here with an ecotheologist and I said, Look at the female going back and forth.

She said, Oh, no.

That's just the male fanning.

And there out there making a social gathering in the middle of the pond.

You know, it’s just fascinating the way nature divides up responsibilities.

So, here you had the male who was just fanning over the eggs, and the females were out there gathered and having tea or something.

Bill, what are after out there?

BILL: Whoop whoop whoop.

GERRY: There, already!

You got one?

BILL: Yeah, just got a nibble.

GERRY: A nibble.

BILL: It's either like a little perch or a little [inaudible].

You!

GERRY: You got him?

BILL: What are you?

GERRY: He's got that nightcrawler that you'd saved for the last cast?

BILL: Yeah, he probably just bit it in half and ran away.

GERRY: Bit it in half and ran away?

BILL: He sure did.

GERRY: Well, do you gotta check it out?

BILL: Yep.

Oh, wait.

No, I still GERRY: No no!

BILL: No, I still got it.

GERRY: Get it back on the hook and get it out there!

BILL: It looks like there's something out there.

GERRY: Go ahead.

And you come out here but you told me a moment ago that you come here not necessarily to catch the fish, but BILL: Not really.

It's just just to be quiet.

[affirming] GERRY: Be quiet.

BILL: There's always sirens.

There's always a car.

There's always some kind of noise.

GERRY: Right.

BILL: So just to GERRY: But here, all we hear right now: the birds singing.

BILL: Right.

No noise.

Or, no the white noise of the highway.

GERRY: Right.

So, that's what it’s about?

BILL: Pretty much.

Central Park and Franklin Park were both created as green spaces for exactly this: to decompress if you live in the city.

GERRY: Well, thank you.

You've just sort of made my day out here, you know, because I feel the same way.

But when you meet somebody who finds what you find, then I think, Wait a minute.

We've got to provide this for other people.

BILL: I think it's necessary for any city.

GERRY: For any city?

In all places, at all times?

BILL: Yep.

GERRY: Couldn't be said better.

WILEM: Hello, there.

How are you?

WOMAN: Hi.

How are you?

WILLEM: While at Olmsted Park, not far from the fishing pond, Jeanie made sure I met two youth leaders that work for the Emerald Necklace Conservancy.

Meredith Gallogly and Alex Curry are both students.

Alex, we've seen a lot of kids in the park today.

They’re everywhere, like munchkins.

They seem to be enjoying it.

You have something to do with that?

ALEX: Yeah.

Basically, we work for the Emerald Necklace, and we have programs where it's like outreach.

We increase knowledge for the community on the importance of having a green space in the city and how it can impact the community.

♪ WILLEM: One way to turn kids on to the Emerald Necklace is helping them discover it.

♪ ALEX: Recently, about two weeks ago, when we first initiated the Youth Leadership Program, we had a freshman in high school, and he did not know that Emerald Necklace was here.

And he's like the city, he has a city mentality.

And he comes in, he starts to change and really appreciate the nature that is in Boston, which is the Emerald Necklace.

We're informing them of the invasive species that can cause detriment to the... Emerald Necklace, and it was fun to see him just take it away and be by himself and just enjoying, like, the dynamics of the plants and, well, the Emerald Necklace.

♪ [gravel crunching] WILLEM: Meredith spends the summer in Boston and rarely leaves the forest.

She looks for invasive woodland plants and then removes them.

MEREDITH: This area in here, this is a section of woodlands.

And generally speaking, it's relatively healthy.

There's a lot of big trees, big oak trees, and there's a sort of diverse age structure within the trees and plenty of sort of native shrubs.

And in other areas, there's, you know if they're completely overtaken by invasive plants, we'd be careful to make sure we're planting something after we remove them so that we don't clear an area bare and just leave it.

Because if we do that, then the invasive plants will just come right back in.

Yeah.

So, we're trying to be very careful WILLEM: And I can't help but notice there's an old native right there.

MEREDITH: Yes.

One nice thing about the forest is that there's a lot of really ancient trees.

WILLEM: Yeah.

MEREDITH: Very large trees.

So, I think, sometimes, when I walk around in here, it feels a little bit more like an old growth forest to me.

♪ [gravel crunching] WILLEM: I enjoyed visiting with Meredith, Alex, and Gerry, but we've got to keep moving.

Our next stop is the 265-acre Arnold Arboretum.

♪ NANCY: Yeah, it's a place for walking and biking and walking dogs and... WILLEM: Among the 15,000 trees and shrubs, I find Nancy Stutzman.

NANCY: Yeah.

See, this is a different... Actually, this was established before there was the Necklace.

This is probably mostly as Olmsted had left it.

WILLEM: That was in 1882.

Nancy keeps Olmsted’s spirit alive by telling his story to people who come to the Arboretum.

NANCY: You know, we have quite a staff here.

This is a partnership with Harvard University and the City of Boston.

The land was originally given by two big donors, Mr. Bussey and Mr. Arnold, and they gave it to the Harvard Corporation who, in turn, gave it back to the City of Boston.

What is really enjoyable about trees, in addition to the greenery aspect, is the bark... Well, I do it for enjoyment, but I’m learning.

Every time I... look at a tree, I say, Oh.

I don’t know what that is.

I’ll have to check that out.

So, I'm not that experienced of a botanist, but an enjoyer of trees and appreciate the value of trees in terms of giving comfort to people and strolling.

We're surrounded here by some busy streets in the middle of the city.

And yet, it's quiet and green.

And one of the men in my group this morning said, [chuckling] Oh, it smells so good here.

♪ DAN: The park has been a counterpoint in my life.

WILLEM: Our final stop’s at Franklin Park, considered by Olmsted to be the crown jewel of his necklace.

There are plenty of woodlands here surrounding a golf course and a zoo.

♪ Dan Richardson grew up here.

Has the park been here longer than you have?

DAN: Oh, yeah!

Oh, yeah.

It's been here much longer than I have.

One of the funny things about this park that you should know is that most people don't know that this park is named after Ben Franklin.

WILLEM: Yeah.

DAN: They just say, Well, why is it Franklin Park?

Well, it's Franklin Park because this was Olmsted's tribute to Ben Franklin.

WILLEM: Here's a photograph of Dan at Franklin Park.

He camped here long ago as a young Scout.

DAN: We had a Troop Troop 15.

And Troop 15 was a very interesting... configuration.

Nobody had a full uniform.

We finally got it.

But we could always come camping.

And we did.

We came camping here.

This was wilderness.

This was the country.

So, we came out here and, you know, we put up our tents up, do our bivouac overnight and, you know, spend the night in Franklin Park, which was very challenging because it was so far away from, you know, all things that we knew... living at Lenox Street Housing Project and being raised in the very careful kind of environment where our mothers always knew where we were.

But we did a lot of things here.

We skated here; we sledded here; we did Scouts here.

We did all the crazy things that kids do if they live in the country, and this was our escape.

And it was wonderful because no one interfered with us here.

And it was really, really super for kids that were born in the late 30s into the 40s.

And... we loved the place and still do.

♪ But there's a special place in all our hearts for Franklin Park.

♪ I love to see the public spaces, you know, getting used and people not having to pay an arm and a leg to sit there to talk to friends and relatives, et cetera.

So, it's it's all turned out well.

WILLEM: I asked Dan what he thought would have happened to this natural space if Olmsted had not envisioned and created the Emerald Necklace.

DAN: I'm not sure what would have happened... if Olmsted hadn’t developed all of this as a Necklace.

I think there probably would have been more interesting... urban curses, because that's the only way I can put it.

You know... being urban is fine as long as it doesn't get out of hand.

And when you start building too much and not enough for people who are elderly and who are needy, you get into trouble.

And, I think the wonder of the Emerald Necklace is that it got done when it got done, fortunately, because it probably wouldn't have happened 50 years after that.

And the fact that now we have a real appreciation for nature, for our space, for the hawks and the robins.

You know, you wake up very close to this community and all you can hear is birds in the morning, and it's really, really wonderful.

And it's wonderful to watch sunset here, as well as sunrise.

If this wasn't here, you couldn't do that.

And I think the, the important thing about that is that... nature is more elemental than people.

People are kind of a drag, and they kind of, you know, mess up stuff.

And, you know, it's much nicer to observe nature than it is to observe people, sometimes.

[chatter] WILLEM: Okay.

Mr. Richardson and I are standing near the top of DAN: Schoolmaster Hill.

WILLEM: Schoolmaster Hill... in Franklin Park [affirming] DAN: In Franklin Park WILLEM: And we've traveled over and we've seen more than half of the different parks today.

And we're going to end it here, sadly.

DAN: Well, you’re always always invited back because this will change, you know?

WILLEM: You want to play golf together?

[both laughing] DAN: Oh, no.

No.

[both laughing] I’m not doin’ golf!

[both laughing] WILLEM: Me neither.

DAN: That’s that's not my thing.

WILLEM: A good walk spoil.

DAN: Yes, exactly!

Mark Twain said, you know, that’s a good way to spoil a good Sunday afternoon walk you play golf.

WILLEM: So, we’re gonna have to DAN: Not a good idea.

[chuckling] WILLEM: We're going to have to close it at this point, which I always hate to do, but I'll do it.

I’m Willem Lange.

This is Dan Richardson.

And we hope to see you again on Windows to the Wild.

DAN: And thank you very much for watching.

[chuckling] WILLEM: Don't mind him.

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