OWNERSHIP
CONDITIONS
CONTEXT
HISTORY
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
DESIGN ISSUES
PLANNING PROCESSES
TESTIMONIES

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OWNERSHIP:
-- Allandale Woods is a mix of public and private areas under conservation restrictions that are held by the Boston Conservation Commission.
-- Public Section: These woods are owned by the City of Boston, and managed by the Boston Department of Parks and Recreation. The City's Assessing Department lists one of the parcels as being owned by the Public Facilities Department.
-- Private Section: Private open lands under conservation restrictions that are owned by the Boston Conservation Commission are themselves owned by Springhouse Incorporated and by the Roxbury Home for Aged Women. According to the City's Assessing Department, the Springhouse Incorporated parcel is the largest of all the parcels in the woods.

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CONDITIONS:
Allandale Woods is a woodland and wetland area that is under conservation restrictions with boundaries that are variously defined. The Department of Parks and Recreation defines the Allandale Woods as 90 acres.

As an urban wild, this area is not as intensively managed as a park, but is minimally managed as a natural woodland. A network of rough, sometimes overgrown trails runs through the urban wild. Some of the trails are clear and marked with blazes, while others are less distinct, or overgrown, and unmarked. There are no maps to orient visitors. A historic stone wall runs through the property.

Water bodies:
The Bussey Brook originates in Allandale Woods and flows through the woods, under Centre Street, through the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center, and through the Arnold Arboretum. After it flows through the Arboretum the brook drops underground and joins the Stony Brook Conduit. There are three ponds, several streams, and a cattail marsh in Allandale Woods. The small streams feed into Bussey Brook from within the Allandale Woods and are only seasonably wet. The Allandale Woods Duck Pond is also located in the forest and is home to a variety of fish, bird, and frog species.

Fire pit:
In June 2002, there was a large rectangular fire pit on the property that has been used to intentionally burn wood. The entire rectangle, along with a substantial amount of wood, has been reduced to ashes and chunks of charred wood. Fire in the pit has caused damage to surrounding trees. Rusty old-fashioned tractors and stone debris from a home also litter the fire pit.

Trash:
There is very little trash anywhere within the urban wild, with the exception of just inside the entrances to the area.

Landscape and ecology:
This is a glacial landscape with frequent outcroppings of Roxbury Puddingstone and extreme topography. The canopy is dominated by oak, as well as maples, while the understory is dominated by blueberry and huckleberry bushes. There are a few sassafras trees and saplings, as well as a few mature hemlock trees with wide boles. Poison ivy is prolific here and there are a few native woodland herbs and wildflowers, despite efforts in the 1980s by ecologists to encourage the growth of native wildflowers.

Entrances and signage:
There are several entrances to the Allandale Woods The main entrance is behind the Church of the Annunciation on the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Parkway near the intersection with Centre Street. There is a small sign here for Allandale Woods and there are several parking places designated for visitors to the urban wild. There is a sign in front of a well-defined trail into the woods just behind the designated parking spaces. For drivers on this fast-moving road, it is easy to miss the signs for Allandale Woods.

One sign on the corner of Centre Street and the VFW Parkway is virtually impossible to read from the road and is often covered by vegetation. There is a small entrance to the Woods right next to the sign. This entrance tends to have more trash than the others.

There is another entrance to Allandale Woods originating from the parking lot behind the Lyndon School trailers, which are located just west of the church. There is no signage here for Allandale Woods, despite the fact that this is perhaps the most scenic section of the wild. Other unsigned entrances include an entrance across from the Police Department Stables at the Brandegee Estate off of Allandale Street; an entrance off of the VFW Parkway; and access points from private homes to the northwest of the Woods.

An entrance to the private section of Allandale Woods is located off of the Springhouse assisted living complex. The area is listed as a "Certified Wildlife Sanctuary," and a formal trail leads through the woodlands to a restored, six-sided springhouse that once provided waters deemed to have healing powers. The trail ends in a seasonal wetland area just before the springhouse, and the surrounding woodlands are filled with brambles and therefore difficult to navigate.

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CONTEXT:
The Boston Parks Department considers Allandale Woods the most important urban wild in the city (Boston Parks and Recreation Department Annual Report, 1999-2000). It is also the second largest urban wild in the city.

Allandale Woods and the Arnold Arboretum are not only physically near one another, they are ecologically linked in a number of ways. For example, Allandale Woods is the source of the Bussey Brook, which flows through Woods and through the Arboretum, as mentioned above. There are several very unusual tree species in Allandale Woods that are most likely the product of seeds transferred by birds that ate fruit in the Arboretum and dispersed seed in Allandale Woods. These included Asian cork trees and caster aralias (Heath & Primack. Allandale Woods: A Fragment of the First Families of Boston. 1991).

Allandale Woods is part of the eight-mile Charles-to-Charles open space corridor. This corridor of parks, private land, and protected wetlands extends from the Fens, along the Brookline/ Boston border to the Charles River in West Roxbury (City of Boston website).

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HISTORY:
Richard Heath and Robert Primack describe the history of the land in this way in their article on Allandale Woods found in "Arnoldia," the journal of the Arnold Arboretum: "During the last three-and-a-half centuries, the land has been the scene of key events both in New England history and in the history of the Weld Farm, with a cast of characters including Puritans, soldiers, farmers, slaves, Revolutionary War patriots, merchant princes, and most recently estate owners and dowagers who have built homes fit for royalty" (Heath and Primak, 1991. Allandale Woods: A Fragment of the First Families of Boston. p30).

Native Americans lived in this area until about 1000 BC. John Winthrop, while he was Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, gave Captain Joseph Weld 285 acres of land in recognition of his service to the colony during the Pequot War of 1637. Part of this land was to become Allandale Woods.

Captain Weld's brother, Reverend Thomas Weld, settled here and used black slave and Native American labor to grow rye, corn, squash, pumpkins, apples, beans, and tobacco. In 1806, Weld sold part of the land to Benjamin Bussey, who established the Arnold Arboretum. He passed another part of the land on to Thomas Williams. Subsequently in 1894, part of the land was sold to Faulkner Hospital and part was sold to the City of Boston to establish a parkway that would connect the Arnold Arboretum to Franklin Park (Heath & Primack. Allandale Woods: A Fragment of the First Families of Boston. 1991).

A springhouse was built here in 1870 to provide water to residents, and the area was soon famous for the healing effects of its water. In 1876 the Allandale Mineral Spring Water Pavilion opened. The spring claimed to be able to cure "dyspepsia, kidney problems, diabetes, gravel, canker, dropsy, catarrh, nervousness, bladder diseases, constipation, eczema, and all skin diseases" (Boston History Collaborative).

Recent history:
Senior citizens who grew up in this neighborhood remember Allandale Woods as the "Big Woods." It was an important territory for some young people out exploring their neighborhood (see testimonies section below).

Using funds from state and federal conservation programs, the Boston Natural Areas Fund purchased part of Allandale Woods (5.6 acres) in 1975 and turned it over to the Boston Conservation Commission. By 1976, the Boston Conservation Commission owned and protected 10.6 acres of Allandale Woods. In 1992, the Appalachian Mountain Club built trails through the woods.

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ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES:
Loss of adjoining lands:
Neighboring woods that were once part of the Southern Estate are now dominated by a Faulkner Hospital elder care facility, which was built in 1992. Land owned by the nearby Church of the Annunciation is also being cleared. The loss of adjoining wildlands puts plant and animal species in Allandale Woods at risk.

Wildflower conservation:
Beginning in 1989, scientists from Boston University, led by Richard Primack, did experiments in Allandale Woods to see how effectively they could reintroduce wildflower species. They planted wildflowers, including partridgeberry, Indian cucumber root, columbine, cardinal flower, and foam flower and have returned over the years to evaluate the success of their plantings. In some cases, the species are still present, but they have not proliferated (Brian Fitzgerald, "Lifelong learning is goal of new Division of Extended Education," B.U. Bridge, Vol. V No. 3. 31, August 2001).

Hemlock wooly adelgid:
Several of the large, mature hemlock trees in Allandale Woods are suffering from hemlock wooly adelgid (see detailed entry on this insect) and are likely to die within several years.

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DESIGN ISSUES:
Awareness of and use of the Allandale Woods among area residents is limited. On a beautiful Sunday afternoon on the first weekend in June 2002, and during two other warm-weather visits, there did not seem to be another person in the woods. The signage, which is difficult to read and in some cases obscured by vegetation, could contribute to this lack of awareness. It is also possible that the lack of physical orientation through maps or blazes could hinder people from using the area more extensively.

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PLANNING PROCESSES:
The Urban Wilds Program staff at the Boston Parks and Recreation Department compiled a natural resource inventory, mapping, and ecological management plan for Allandale Woods in 2000.

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TESTIMONIES:
"The Big Woods (Allandale Woods) was boundless, maybe 40 or 50 acres of hardwoods and abandoned quarry; now houses and churches have intruded. We roasted potatoes in the Big Woods by a brook, almost beyond the sound of traffic. Tommy and I shot a .22 rifle in those woods, smuggling the rifle there in two parts, the barrel down his leg, the butt under my shirt, as we walked down streets, through the Little Woods, across a corner of the Arnold Arboretum to our sanctuary" (Peter Anderson, "Roslindale Remembered," The Boston Globe Magazine, March 18, 1990).

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