New partnership gives the Fens – and Northeastern co-op students – a chance to thrive
A three-year partnership among Northeastern, the Boston Parks and Recreation department and the Lawrence and Lillian Solomon Foundation will steward the Back Bay Fens.
The Back Bay Fens in Boston is a jewel in multiple ways.
As a part of the Emerald Necklace park system designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, it holds a place as a jewel in the middle of the city. The open space encompasses approximately 100 acres of wooded areas, walking paths, bridges, a rose garden, a freshwater lagoon, and a variety of wildlife, including ducks, geese, turtles, and herons.
All of that offers respite and recreation for residents of surrounding neighborhoods, including students on Northeastern University’s Boston campus.
But every jewel could use polishing at some point, and the Fens is no different.
“There is a big ecological challenge, which is invasive plants primarily,” said Jonathan Bacdayan, Fens park steward. Bacdayan, a double Husky who graduated with his master’s degree in environmental science and policy in 2025, also cited erosion and soil compaction — where soil has little empty space for air, water and plant roots — as issues in the park, particularly along its well-traveled paths and riverbanks.
Thanks to a new public-private partnership, Northeastern is on the task.
“As someone who really values a park that brings a bit of wilderness into an urban area, anything we can do to improve it for the public, but also improve it from an ecological standpoint, mixes two of my biggest interests,” said Northeastern co-op student Natalie Curtis.
Curtis and fellow Husky Jackson “Tucker” Andrews will spend the next five months working with Bacdayan as stewards of the park. Walking beneath the red oaks that shade much of the park recently and taking in her surroundings, “it has a lot of potential,” Curtis said.
According to the National Park Service, which runs the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Olmsted created the Back Bay Fens in the late 19th century by converting part of a trash-strewn, stinky tidal creek called the Muddy River and its surrounding swampland into a scenic pool lined by parkland.
But over the course of the next century, silt filled in the river, invasive plants crowded out native species along the riverbanks, and the area regularly flooded, explained Bacdayan, who will manage the co-op students and was a student employee at the Northeastern Arboretum. The arboretum secured funding for the project and employs Bacdayan and the co-op students.
In late 2023, the Army Corps of Engineers completed a multi-decade, $90 million effort to restore the river by removing the silt from the riverbed, removing invasive species and restoring the riverbanks.
Now, Northeastern, the Boston Parks and Recreation department and the Lawrence and Lillian Solomon Foundation, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to championing Greater Boston’s greenspace, have entered into a three-year partnership to ensure that the federal and local efforts to enhance the Fens continue.
“Three years from now we will see a Back Bay Fens transformed with healthy stands of trees and shrubs along the banks of the Muddy River,” said Herb Nolan, the foundation’s executive director. “We owe it to the next generation to invest in the shared ground beneath our feet.”
The hope is that the partnership will provide an opportunity not just for native plants and a local park, but for the next generation of stewards as well.
“It’s an investment not only in the future of the Back Bay Fens, but in the people who will help care for Boston’s parks for years to come,” said Diana Fernandez Bibeau, the Boston parks and recreation commissioner and deputy chief of open space.
The pilot program will focus on a roughly 15-acre area of the Fens that is mainly used for passive recreation – the pathways, riverbanks and parkland – and excludes the Victory Gardens, the James P. Kelleher Rose Garden and athletic fields, Bacdayan said.
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Still, there’s a lot to do.
The co-op students, Bacdayan and workers with the city will collaborate on several tasks, including removing invasive plants, cataloguing plant and tree species, planning for and developing new beds and plantings, restoring grassy areas, and doing public and visitor outreach.
“This is an example of a moment that could be great,” Bacdayan said as he, Curtis and Andrews walked through the Fens.
Approaching a small tangle of green at the divergence of two paths, Bacdayan noted the variety of plants and leaf shapes and juxtaposed the more formal geometry of the bed against the plantings that hugged the banks of the meandering Muddy River just yards away.
Then he pointed out the dead tree at the juncture whose bare limbs jutted into the crown of a mature, native red oak tree and whose base was covered with an invasive weed known as burdock as well as with other weeds.
“So this is the kind of thing where we’re going to be intervening and trying to help course correct and make it look better,” Bacdayan said, explaining that the tree would be removed and the bed could be weeded and replanted.
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Moving toward the riverbank, spires of bright purple flowers caught Bacdayan’s eye.
“Purple loosestrife causes me anguish,” Bacdayan said, identifying the very abundant and aggressive invasive plant and grabbing a pair of garden clippers.
He then instructed Andrews and Curtis on how to identify the plant and to cut it down to its base to give the surrounding native elderberries and hickory saplings a chance to thrive.
For Andrews, not only is the work valuable, but you can’t beat the workspace, he said.
“I really like focusing on urban parks, urban green spaces, and understanding what goes into the maintenance and upkeep of that,” the co-op student said. “I wanted to get an understanding of what it would be like actually working there, and then also seeing the policy work and working with the city of Boston to do this has been really interesting for me.”
