The Cambridge Plant & Garden Club has just completed a two-year project, Discover Cambridge Pocket Parks 2024. Working in close cooperation with the City of Cambridge, the club has identified and described for the first time 21 pocket parks throughout Cambridge. Defined as under 1 acre, with green plantings and some place to sit, a pocket park’s primary purpose is respite, rather than recreation. Pocket parks are small green oases where Cambridge residents of all ages can enjoy a brief intermission from city life.
Discover Cambridge Pocket Parks is a booklet (pocket-sized, in fact) with an introduction to the history of pocket parks and an explanation as to why these small green spaces are of such increasing value in cities. The booklet includes descriptions of the parks, a map showing their locations and recommendations to the city for the future.
Discover Cambridge Pocket Parks is available on the Garden Club’s website. For the first time, the city has identified its pocket parks on its Community Development Department’s Open Space Map Gallery and Park Information Page.
The booklet’s introduction traces the history of American public parks from the large iconic parks such as Central Park in New York. For the immigrant communities newly arrived in the increasingly crowded cities, these could be visited only on the weekend, and only by taking a long hot, tram ride.
Alternatively, 19th century London began to convert neglected neighborhood church cemeteries into small public parks. After World War II, the rubble of bombed city blocks was transformed into small green gardens and squares.
By the mid-1900s industrialization forced job seekers to move from the countryside into dense, overcrowded cities, and available space for large parks became hard to come by. Because they are small, the spaces where pocket parks can be built are more likely to be affordable, available and accessible.
Jump-started by the Covid pandemic, the value of small, plentiful neighborhood parks is now the focus of international interest. While the importance of parks to physical health – fresh air and exercise – had long been recognized, it was during Covid that it became clear that access to nature, even minute bits of it, is just as essential to mental health.
The heart of the booklet is the descriptions and photographs of the 21 pocket parks in Cambridge. Working closely with Ellen Coppinger from the Department of Public Works and Gary Chan of the Cambridge Development Department, the club’s pocket park committee visited more than 40 open spaces. Based on the committee’s explorations, 21 from the original list were deemed by Coppinger and Chan as meeting the criteria of what the city would now officially designate and map as pocket parks.
The oldest pocket park in Cambridge, predating the Revolution, is Winthrop Park in Harvard Square; the newest is Triangle Park in East Cambridge. Cambridge pocket parks have come into existence circumstantially and vary widely in style and mood. The formal serenity of Longfellow Park with its many places to sit to view the Charles River is on land donated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s children; equally historic, Centanni Way, with its curving paths, deep flower beds and multiple benches, faces the magnificent restoration of the Bulfinch County Courthouse in East Cambridge. More modest beginnings characterize the Costa Lopez Taylor Park, which began as a dumping ground for dirty snow, and the small triangle at the intersection of Mount Auburn and Hawthorn has been transformed by its neighbors from a weedy patch into a cultivated, verdant corner.
Garden Street Glen in North Cambridge and Hastings Park in East Cambridge offer the mature trees, generous benches, wide pathways and sense of quiet that characterize a successful pocket park. Another important quality for success is varied plantings, not just a patch of grass, but the harmony of greenery of different shapes and shades. A sense of sanctuary is best provided by some type of enclosure – trees, fences, the refuge of a space apart. The magical little Clarendon Avenue Park has all these elements: a circular fenced design with roses and catmint surrounding small tables and chairs under shady trees. Franklin Street Park is the jewel in Cambridge’s crown most often published in international collections of exemplary small parks. An imposing granite gate guards its entry, along with other sculptural elements.
Sculpture graces many of these parks: the water feature in Lowell School Park; the “spiral foot print” uniting the overall design of Quincy Square Park. Much of this artwork is thanks to Cambridge Arts, and the city is greatly in its debt.
The booklet’s last section includes recommendations to the city for ways to enhance existing parks. Access to green space is a matter of equity, not just well-being. Discover Cambridge Pocket Parks closes with the hope that the city will develop more of these small spaces in the neighborhoods that need them most.
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Marty Mauzy is a Cambridge resident and member of the Cambridge Plant & Garden Club. Marty Mauzy, Candace Young and Hilary Wodlinger were the club’s pocket parks project committee co-chairs; committee members were Liz Coxe, Sandra Fairbank, Dotty Gonson, Kate Olivier and Deb Masterson.
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These parks are marvelous, but unfortunately the city does not have a maintenance budget sufficient for clearing them of snow and ice. The upkeep as regards cleanliness can be lacking, and I have on many occasions done cleanups in local parks.
I never think of Centanni Park as a pocket park at all. As used today our newly created pocket parks are tiny and barely usable other than a vista. Centanni Park is beautifully maintained but not by the city. There was an old agreement in which Bullfinch Building Complex (Graham Gund) assumes responsibility of the park and its maintenance, summer and winter, planting, watering, snow removal. It is very well utilized and maintained.
It goes to show you how important it is to be involved in the love and care of our local green space. By logging on to see the Cambridge Plant & Garden Club, its clear that they keep an eye on the needs of many of these parks, and have a program with CRLS to help bring along our next generation in taking care of our community.