Stewardship
Thomas Patti
If a Tree Falls: Wildlands' Storm Damage ...
Wildlands Updates
Thomas Patti
Communities Unite to Expand D.W. Field Park
Stewardship, Outreach
Thomas Patti
Volunteers Flock to Bridgewater Trail Project
Outreach, Wildlands Updates
Thomas Patti
Photos: Wildlands Celebrates 50th Anniversary
Stewardship, Outreach
Thomas Patti
Brockton Elementary School Receives Outdoor ...

Wildlands Bids Farewell to Wendy Jones

By Thomas Patti, Communications Coordinator

In July, Wildlands bid farewell to our beloved Office Manager, Wendy Jones. After six years deftly balancing her Wildlands role with an assessor position for the Town of Plympton, Wendy has opted for a simpler work life, becoming the full-time Principal Assessor with the Town of Whitman. We will miss Wendy’s kind and calming presence around the office, and wish her the best in this next chapter of her career! 

“My favorite part of working at Wildlands was not only the pleasant environment, but working with dedicated staff, volunteers, and board members who are committed to accomplishing rewarding work in land protection,” Wendy said. “It may sound a little corny, but it’s true! Also, each property has its own unique attributes and challenges, and the Wildlands staff is adept at handling all situations. Sometimes you never know what kind of call or email you receive from the public—and there are some interesting ones!” 

Wendy’s path to Wildlands was long and winding, yet fueled at every step by a passion for learning and a commitment to her family. After an early foray into the legal field, Wendy pivoted to public television, where she worked for 15 years on PBS science documentary programs like Scientific American Frontiers and Audubon. After traveling extensively for a project with Harvard University, Wendy prepared for a closer-to-home career while juggling the roles of mom, student, and professional. She began managing a commercial property on Cape Cod and working toward an appraiser license, which led her to become a Massachusetts Accredited Assessor (MAA). Somehow, these various experiences brought Wendy to Wildlands—and we couldn’t be happier that they did. 

“For the past six years, we have all marveled at Wendy’s masterful ability to carry out two part-time jobs, each with a considerable workload and tremendous responsibility,” said Wildlands President Karen Grey. “She never missed a beat. Wendy is dedicated and conscientious and has always dropped whatever she is doing to help any one of us in need. With Wendy, it is not what she does, but how she does it. We will miss her tremendously.” 

We couldn’t let Wendy go without a feast. Last month, Wildlands staff convened after work in the Conservation Barn to share laughs, memories, and well wishes with Wendy over tacos and cake. In recognition of her dedication to the Trust, Wendy received a Yeti cooler, stocked with wine. 

Thank you, Wendy, for your immense contributions to Wildlands Trust!  

Recipes From the Community Garden

By Nora Cannon 

Community Garden at Davis-Douglas Farm

This spring, Wildlands Trust welcomed Nora Cannon to our Community Garden at Davis-Douglas Farm. As an artist, cook, and master gardener, Nora believes that, with a little creativity, locally grown food can inspire delicious, nutritious, affordable, and innovative meals. We invited Nora to share some of her favorite homegrown recipes with the Wildlands community. 

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It has been a good growing season in our community gardens. New England overall is having a nice summer, and gardeners are looking forward to the lingering warm days of September to continue to bring in the harvest. Here are several of my favorite recipes at this time of year—one a cooked-then-cooled salad, and the other a quick bread to enjoy now and, if you’re lucky enough to have leftovers, freeze for the middle of winter, when we start looking at seed catalogs and dreaming of the warm days ahead. 

Happy Gardening! 👩‍🌾 

Nora    

Italian Potato Salad with Green Beans and Tomatoes 

Okay, it sounds fancy—but it’s so simple!  

  • 2 pounds small new or red potatoes  

  • Cook until tender; cut in halves or quarters  

  • 1 teaspoon salt 

  • 1 pound string green beans trimmed 

  • Steam; cut in quarters   

  • ½ teaspoon salt 

  • 1 cup cherry tomatoes  

  • Cut in halves 

  • Combine cooked vegetables and tomatoes in a bowl. Toss with ¼ jar of your favorite Italian salad dressing (I like Paul Newman’s Organic). Enjoy!  

Best Zucchini Bread 

This zucchini bread freezes well or keeps in your refrigerator for several weeks. I recommend you bake a day ahead, as it tastes better the next day. This recipe makes a 9” x 5” loaf pan, or several smaller loaf pans and muffins. It sounds like a lot of steps, but the result is well worth it! 

  • Spray or butter loaf pans. For muffins, I use cupcake liners. 

  • Beat 3 eggs, 1 ¼ cup vegetable oil, 1 ½ cup sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract together in a bowl 

  • Sift together 2 cups grated unpeeled raw zucchini, 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon cloves (pumpkin spice works well also), and one cup walnuts. Blend wet and dry ingredients together. 

  • Bake at 350 degrees in oven. 1 hour for loaf pan and less for smaller pans and muffins. Check after 25 minutes and test center. 

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The Community Garden at Davis-Douglas Farm in Plymouth provides Wildlands members with an opportunity to grow foods and flowers of their own and meet fellow gardeners in the area. To learn more, visit our Community Garden page.  

What you can’t grow yourself, buy local! Wildlands members receive discounts at multiple local farms: Bay End Farm in Bourne, Nessralla Farm in Halifax, Hornstra Farm in Norwell, and Vineyard Farm in West Bridgewater. To become a member, click here.  

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Brockton Elementary School Receives Outdoor Classroom

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By Thomas Patti, Communications Coordinator

Update (9/6/2023): The outdoor classroom is officially complete! Thank you to all who helped us with this project, including students and families from the George School who came out to volunteer on August 16. See the gallery at the bottom of this page for new photos.

If you're anything like the Wildlands staff, your fondest childhood memories might revolve around the shortest part of the school day—recess. Fresh air, green grass, and warm sunlight kindled moments of profound joy and discovery. Yet when classes resumed minutes later, your window for natural exploration would close, as quickly as it had opened. Why cut this formative period short? 

A deluge of new research confirms what we’ve intuitively known to be true since we were schoolchildren ourselves, pleading with our teachers to hold class outside on a beautiful spring morning—that learning is best when it’s done outdoors. From mental and physical health to social behavior and academic performance, hundreds of studies highlight the benefits of nature-based classrooms to the well-being of students and teachers alike. 

The promise of outdoor learning peaks in urban neighborhoods, where a lack of green space has historically excluded low-income, racially diverse communities from the public health benefits of access to nature.  

This summer, Wildlands Trust and our partners started to address this need in the largest Environmental Justice community we serve. Our staff and volunteers have been hard at work building an outdoor learning space at the Manthala George Jr. Global Studies Elementary School in Brockton. Centered on the George School’s community garden, the outdoor classroom will include five recycled-plastic picnic tables in front of a foldable whiteboard, as well as a woodland sitting circle, a weather station kiosk, and an interchangeable story walk.  

Green Team weatherproofs tree stump stools for a woodland sitting circle at the George School in Brockton.

The construction effort was spearheaded by the Green Team, a joint initiative between Wildlands Trust and Manomet that pays Brockton-area teens to advance environmental stewardship in their home city, all while building knowledge, skills, and professional connections in the conservation field. Over two Tuesdays in July, the Green Team visited the George School to restore the community garden beds, install gutters for rain barrels, weatherproof tree stump stools for the sitting area, and level a pathway to the learning space. On Tuesday, August 15, teachers and students from the George School will volunteer to add finishing touches to the outdoor classroom, including by planting a native pollinator garden and filling the garden beds with organic soil for students to plant seeds in next spring. The learning area will be ready for the school community to enjoy when classes resume in the fall. 

The work is part of Brockton Kids Lead the Way, an initiative developed by Dr. Molly Jacobs of Manomet and supported by Wildlands Trust and Brockton Public Schools that strives to foster city students' connection to nature. Two more outdoor classrooms will come to Brockton elementary schools by 2025 as part of this NOAA-funded initiative. The next project site is Hancock Elementary School, where Wildlands and Manomet will spend the upcoming school year gathering input from teachers and students before building an outdoor learning space in summer 2024. 

Stay tuned for updates as our work continues this summer and beyond!  

Click through the slideshow below to view more photos from the George School outdoor classroom project. 

Meet Wildlands Trust's Seasonal Staff!

By Thomas Patti, Communications Coordinator

Every summer, the Wildlands family gets a bit bigger. Seasonal Land Stewards join our ranks to support the stewardship team during the busiest part of the year. This season, a college intern is also providing her services to the Trust. Read on to learn more about these new faces at Wildlands. 

Seasonal Land Stewards 

Caleb Griffin

Caleb joins our stewardship team this summer from Cape Cod Community College, where he studied environmental science. He will continue his studies this fall at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Caleb grew up hiking and mountain biking in Bourne. He is excited to hone his trail-building skills with Wildlands.

Tyler Williams

Tyler returns to Wildlands for his second summer as a Seasonal Land Steward. He graduated from UMass Boston this spring with a degree in environmental science. In his free time, Tyler enjoys camping in the woods, relaxing on the beach, and watching nature documentaries. The Norton native is eager to advance Wildlands’ mission of protecting land and wildlife this summer.

Marina Smiarowski

Marina rounds out our seasonal stewardship staff. She graduated from high school this spring and will attend the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in the fall. Engaging with the trails and programs of her local land trust while growing up in southern Connecticut left Marina eager to learn more about the inner workings of a land conservation organization. Marina recently interned with the Stewart B. McKinney US Fish & Wildlife Service unit in Connecticut.

Intern 

Maddie Luongo

Maddie is a rising senior at Wheaton College, where she is majoring in English and minoring in environmental studies and philosophy. At Wildlands, Maddie will work closely with the programming department to support the D.W. Field Park Initiative and Brockton Green Team. “Having grown up in Plymouth, I’ve been able to see firsthand the effect that an organization like Wildlands has on the surrounding community, and how it has fundamentally changed the way people regard their surroundings,” Maddie says. “I am glad to now have the opportunity to have some part in that.” After graduating next spring, Maddie hopes to pursue a career in environmental writing. In her free time, she enjoys reading and writing outside and playing folk music with friends. She plays the flute, penny whistle, and “whatever other small wind instrument the song calls for!”

Thank you all for the work you have already done and will continue to do this summer! We are ecstatic to have you aboard! 

Seasonal Land Stewards Hone Skills at STC

By Thomas Patti, Communications Coordinator

Late last month, our burgeoning Stewardship Training Center (STC) reached a major milestone in its mission to build land stewardship capacity across the state. 

On June 26 and 27, Wildlands Trust hosted its first Seasonal Land Steward Training at the STC. Ten trainees, each holding a land stewardship role this summer with a city, town, or environmental nonprofit, converged on the STC from across Massachusetts to gain invaluable conservation skills and expand their professional network. The program, reviewed positively by participants, marks the first in hopefully a long line of initiatives at the STC to support the sustained care of conservation lands, especially during peak periods of human use. 

“I am extremely excited to have had the opportunity to bring this group of seasonals together,” said Wildlands Stewardship Coordinator Zoë Smiarowski. “I think all of the participants worked extremely well collaboratively and learned from each other and the instructors in the most positive way.” 

The training began bright and early on Monday morning with a group hike and trail maintenance workshop at our Halfway Pond Conservation Area, the setting of the STC. Leading the workshop were Mary Doucette of the Buzzards Bay Coalition and Colleen Andrews of Mattapoisett Land Trust. Around midday, Mary and Colleen were joined by Zoë to teach trainees how to care for stewardship tools. After lunch, trainees honed their invasive plant identification and removal skills through a presentation and hike led by Kelly Barber of Barnstable Land Trust.  

Kelly Barber of Barnstable Land Trust leads an invasive plant identification walk.

On Tuesday, Chris Crowther of Certified Rescue Courses trained program participants in first aid and CPR. Trainees then learned to build wooden benches during a carpentry workshop led by Wildlands staff. Finally, Nate Cristofori and Michael Cahill of the Plymouth Department of Marine and Environmental Affairs presented to the group about interacting with the public on conservation land.  

“I look forward to continued and new collaborations with the wide range of talented conservation professionals and volunteers in the region,” Zoë said about the STC. “I feel extremely fortunate to be a part of the community here in Southeastern Massachusetts and I'm excited to see all the creative projects that come together for the betterment of our lands and waters.” 

Thank you to all who attended our program, and to the guest instructors for providing their passion and expertise! Wildlands Trust looks forward to working with these and new partners as the STC marches forward in its first full year of operation.  

To learn more about the STC and browse upcoming events, visit our Training page. 

Click through the gallery below to view more photos from the 2023 Seasonal Land Steward Training.