Calahan Park’s New Playground
Calahan park’s new playground is up and running! BPRW installed the new playground based on community feedback gathered in the comprehensive plan project completed by Offshoots in 2022. Through an extensive public engagement process including focus groups, online and...
Orchard Installation!
Our installation team just wrapped up an addition to the Sudbury Farm Orchard! They planted an additional 8 apple trees including Malus ‘Fuji’, Malus ‘Honeycrisp’, Malus ‘Honey gold’, Malus ‘Freedom’, and Malus ‘Pink Lady’. Last year, a total of 20 trees were planted,...
Blessing of the Bay Meadow – Field Trip, July 2023
Today was an exciting day at the Blessing of the Bay Meadow in Somerville! Offshoots met with the Somerville Pollinator Action Plan Advisory Committee and members from several local planning and advocacy organizations on site to discuss some of the successes and...
Evidence for Using Plants and Fertilizer to Help Break Down Petroleum!
University of Alaska Microbiology Professor Mary Beth Leigh recently lead a team to study the long-term progress of the affects of introducing grass and fertilizer to soil test plots contaminated with petroleum. The original experiment was conducted in 1995 by the US...
PHYTO Trees Clean Contaminated Stormwater!
Kate recently went on a walkthrough of DuPage County Landfill in Chicago where poplar trees are being used to clean up contaminated leachate from an unlined landfill. Since 2018, a remediation system comprised of 8,500 trees on 14 acres of land irrigated by polluted...
Miyawaki Forests in Cambridge!
Offshoots recently discovered an organization called Biodiversity for a Livable Climate (Bio4Climate), the group responsible of the creation and succession of the Miyawaki Forests in Cambridge, MA. Bio4Climate was formed in 2013 when four climate activists bonded...
Phy2SUDOE: A Collaborative Resource for Advancing Phytoremediation Research and Development
Interested in learning more about phytoremediation? The Phy2SUDOE project is a 30-month long research investigation, starting on January 11th, 2020, that focuses on developing phytoremediation strategies for contaminated sites in Southern Europe. The project involves...
NorthCreek Nursery – Space Invaders: Multiflora Rose
NorthCreek Nursery, one of our favorite sources for native plant plugs, has an excellent blog post this month on how this common MA invasive arrived here, how it spreads and impacts the landscape, and steps you can take right now to minimize it's spread. Check it out...
Carbon-Negative Concrete: Meet CarbiCrete!
As Landscape Architects, we are always trying to find ways to reduce a project's carbon footprint, yet one of the most ubiquitous, materials we find ourselves having to specify is concrete; however, the production of concrete produces a lot of carbon dioxide. This is...
Seed Germination at New England Biolabs!
A few weeks ago our installation team wrapped up work on a woodland transition restoration project in Ipswich. The planting mimics the existing Oak-Hickory Forest to create a transition zone that will help restore the woodland edge over time. Quick germinating fescues...