Plants & Trees

 

Franklin Park has stately oaks, beautiful wildflowers, and edible and medicinal plants and herbs, as well as mushrooms and fungi. Unfortunately, it also has invasive plants such as Japanese knotweed that are overwhelming the native plants and taking over the park.

 

Check out park designer, Frederick Law Olmsted's, plant list for the Emerald Necklace to learn more about what he planted as Franklin Park was built.  

You can also learn more about the park's plant life from the Woodlands Managment Plan - a blueprint to save the forest. More than a century old, many of the majestic trees that make Franklin Park so special are dying. Air pollution, heavy park use, and lack of maintenance may be hastening their demise, but just like people, trees have a definite life span. In an urban setting 200 years is a long life for an oak tree!