News Archive

CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER: Pumpkin Carving Party

Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:55

Tonight's Pumpkin carving party and hotdog roast has been cancelled due to many limbs down and slushy grounds... Have a Happy Halloween!

DUE TO RAIN: Autumnal Evening Tour Changed to Sept. 30th

Thursday, 25 August 2011 14:47

2011 Interns Make An Impression

Monday, 15 August 2011 11:15

This week our 2011 Wakefield Estate Landscape Interns will complete their sixth and final week and they have proven to be a fantastic crew. Each year, the intern crew is selected from applicants who are 16-20 year-old greater Boston area students. This year, we have a crew of ten, including students from Milton, Canton and a wide array of Boston Public High Schools including Boston Prep, Boston Latin, and John O'Bryant. In addition, this year we were especially excited to have students from Norfolk Agricultural for the first time, and a pair from UMass Amherst. This season's interns have done exceptional work sprucing up the formal gardens and trails throughout the property, helping care for the sheep and chickens, and continuing our efforts to rehabilitate overgrown and poorly maintained areas of our collection. Our two young women from UMass Amherst served as Landscape Documentation Interns, working most of their hours with staff member Deb Merriam in her effort to develop and implement a system to properly document the estate's horticultural collection. These students will return to Amherst to begin their sophmore year, while several of the interns are heading off to college as incoming freshmen, and the others returning to their high schools in September.

Sheep are back at the Wakefield Estate!

Thursday, 23 June 2011 12:47

Tuesday was an exciting day at the estate - our final school visit - and the arrival of 3 beautiful baby Shetland Sheep. Following in Polly Wakefield's footsteps, we have re-introduced sheep to the estate as a way to more naturally and sustainably manage the turf in parts of the landscape - just as Polly did 50 years ago. After weeks of fence building, clean-up, and preparation, our lambs arrived fresh from being weaned at a farm in Rhode Island. Polly Wakefield (Mary M. B.) had 25 Horned Dorset sheep during the seventies, a variety much larger than these will be as adults. A true Yankee and conservationist, she enjoyed the pastoral beauty of having sheep grazing, but loved the fact that it saved money on mowing, and fertilized all her trees. We have yet to name the sheep, but we found out that the all black and all white are twins referred to as #50 and #51, from a mother named Queen Elizabeth! While the spring's last first graders at least got to look in on the lambs, we hope our electric fence and preparation can keep them safe until the students return in fall.