Woman holding binoculars Join today and get outside at one of our 60+ wildlife sanctuaries.
Woman holding binoculars Join today and get outside at one of our 60+ wildlife sanctuaries.
A boardwalk cutting through tall green shrubs and trees.
Boston Nature Center, Mattapan

Bringing Healthy Food to Boston Nature Center

Boston Nature is dedicated to helping the community grow and find healthy produce.

Community Garden

A community garden allows community members to grow their own veggies. 

Organic CSA and Farmers Market

Boston Nature Center is partnering with Moose Hill Wildlife Sanctuary to bring freshly grown produce to BNC each week as part of our Farmers Market and as a pickup location for Moose Hill's CSA (community supported agriculture). 

Boston Food Forest

Boston Nature Center is home to Boston Food Forest Coalition's (BFFC) first flagship food forest demonstration site, which reflects the cultural preferences of the surrounding community, offers access to healthy food for those who need it most, and serves as an educational model. 

BFFC is an organization of committed neighbors across Boston that envision a robust network of neighborhood-based, publicly accessible edible food forest gardens and orchards located throughout Boston. Their mission is to revive and conserve Boston’s established legacy orchards, as well as create new edible food forest sites.

The goal, with the help of more than 200 volunteers, is to raise one ton of food for distribution in the community in a given year. The group’s growing methods focus on permaculture as this best practice method uses less water, labor, fertilizer, and energy than typical gardening; emphasizes perennial plantings inter-planted with popular annual food crops; and builds diverse habitats and healthy soil.

As part of the partnership, BFFC revived the BNC urban orchard and significantly enhanced the landscape by planting trees, growing bee-friendly plants, and enriching the health of the soil. All of these landscape enhancements provide significant volunteer and educational opportunities for both the BFFC and BNC communities.