Five beloved green spaces in Dorchester will get a fresh burst of life after receiving five of a ten-grant allotment from the Henry Lee Fund for Boston Parks, which supports community-driven projects that improve parks and gardens across Boston, according to the parks advocacy groups Friends of the Public Garden.
The Dorchester sites, which will get grants ranging from $2,000 to $5,000, are: The 89 Radcliffe Street Food Forest, Ronan Park, Adams-King Playground, Rev. Loesch Family Park, and Thetford Evans Playground.
“Everybody has a park somewhere close to them that can be really meaningful to them,” said Liza Meyer, president of Friends of the Public Garden. “This kind of grant program can help foster that connection between neighbors and park users to build a broader network of advocates.”
The fund, which is in its second year, honors Henry Lee, the founder of the Friends organization. Lee, who died in 2024 at 99 years old, was a lifetime advocate for equity in urban parks, according to the group.
The Boston Food Forest Coalition is spearheading work on the Radcliffe Street Food Forest (below), an “edible park” that integrates fruit trees and berry-laden bushes to provide food access and a community gathering space, said Liz Luc Clowes, its director of engagement and construction.
The coalition will put its $5,000 grant toward creating multilingual educational signage for plant identification, way-finding, and instructions for harvesting.
“These signs really are a bridge to bring people in, because there are people from many cultures that live in Dorchester, Mattapan, and the places that we serve,” Luc Clowes said. “In some communities, people speak Spanish, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, Chinese, Vietnamese… this is a way to bridge people together.”
The food forest is under construction and will open later this year, Luc Clowes said.
The St. Marks Area Civic Association will use its $5,000 to create a “mini oasis of nature in a very urban place” at Adams-King Playground by upgrading a pollinator garden and planting native perennial floral, Secretary Jamie Bemis said.
“We obviously wanted to enhance our community with this beautiful garden open to everyone that’s a place for people to come and get a respite from the traffic and noise of the city, and just be in nature,” Bemis said.
The association also aims to make the garden a sanctuary for local wildlife, specifically pollinators, through its improvements. Bemis recalled the fulfillment of seeing and hearing swarms of bees as residents added perennial plants into the garden.
“We’re all in this together, sharing our love for gardening and amplifying the work of creating food for our neighbors, both human and non-human alike,” she said.
Just a few blocks away, the trees at Rev. Loesch Family Park will get a makeover with a $5,000 grant to the nonprofit Speak for the Trees. They will be professionally pruned, an initiative that will boost their long-term health, improve shade, and influence people’s mental and physical health, said advancement director Lisa Crist.
“The impact of low tree canopy coverage is really being felt by people,” Crist said. “That’s everything from air quality to heat, temperature, everything from mental health to physical health to property values.”
The Friends of Ronan Park, a volunteer-run organization dedicated to preserving the park, received $2,000 to upgrade the entrance at Mount Ida and Holmes Avenue, President Eleni Macrakis said.
The group will add plants near a Little Free Library, improve pathways and repaint seat walls, she added, noting that seeing people reading books from the library or watching the sunset while sitting on the seat wall is a common occurrence in the summer.
“We’re just excited that a park that’s not downtown is getting attention in terms of these grant funds and recognizing that people in some of the other neighborhoods also deserve a great park space and deserve the funds that can improve the space and activate the space,” Macrakis said.
Redefining Our Community will put its $5,000 award toward beautification efforts at the Thetford Evans site. The playground, used by local families and day care centers, will undergo perimeter plantings and general improvements, according to a press release. The organization did not respond to requests for an interview.
With Dorchester’s parks making up half of the Lee Fund’s recipients, the funding speaks to the neighborhood’s dedication to urban biodiversity.
“People are learning from each other and meeting the moment, the moment for the climate, the moment for food access,” Luc Clowes said. “As there are increasing changes in the country, open spaces are really important for people to have a place to gather.”
The grant also reflect the strength of Dorchester’s local groups in recognizing the neighborhood as a socioeconomically diverse place and providing for those individuals in the ways they know best.
“There’s a sense of community ownership that comes from being able to see an idea through,” Meyer said, “from an initial conversation or just a light bulb moment, into actually being built and being able to be enjoyed in person.”
The advocacy groups’ organizers acknowledged the park projects they are working on is part of a broader initiative to establish the parks and gardens as community havens and gathering spaces that define Dorchester as a neighborhood.
“These are places of joy, places of resilience,” Luc Clowes said. “When we work together as a community to build them, the community’s voice is captured in the landscape.”
This story is the product of a partnership between The Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.