AYER — Roughly a year ago, over 100 residents planted 30-plus species of native trees, shrubs, and other plants in soil inoculated with beneficial fungi and microbes.
To celebrate the one-year anniversary of this special event, the community is invited to the 1st birthday of Ayer’s East Main Street Neighborhood Pocket Forest from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, at the downtown overhead rail-bridge on East Main Street.
The event – being held with the help of the town and the Devens Enterprise Commission (DEC) – will feature guided discovery tours of the young and growing pocket forest, enlightening “tree” poetry and literary readings, live acoustic guitar and vocal performance by Eric Kilburn and Friend of Acton, delicious healthy food offerings from Marty’s Corner Café, a “Mother of Ayer’s Trees” Sarah Nutting Bennett’s Neighborhood Mini-Historic Walking Tour, and the return of the “Green Man” to the forest ground.
“We are excited to be partnering with Ayer on this innovative green infrastructure project, incorporating elements of the natural environment into urbanized areas to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, manage stormwater runoff, create wildlife habitat, and bring more people closer to nature – for the multiple health and wellness benefits these productive spaces provide,” said Neil Angus, Director of DEC.
The neighborhood location of the East Main Street Pocket Forest, combined with the density and diversity of native plants, will serve to biologically filter the constant air pollution of diesel exhaust and other particulate matter emitted from the adjacent heavy-freight railroad operations and heavy-trucking and car traffic route running along Ayer’s East Main Street neighborhood.
The pocket forest will also provide a natural buffer and help provide more shade and mitigate the harmful “heat-island effects” that impact this historic neighborhood which has an overabundance of asphalt.
The plants within this pocket forest are already helping to attract the threatened missing native pollinators – such as bees, butterflies and birds – back into the living vitality of the neighborhood.
“Last year’s planting and nurturing of the first innovative and healthful pocket forest in Central Massachusetts in Ayer’s East Main Street Neighborhood is a great point of civic pride,” said Alan S. Manoian, Director of the Ayer Office of Community & Economic Development. “The Ayer/Devens Pocket Forest ‘pilot’ will serve to inspire countless other New England communities to advance the creation of their envisioned and healthful pocket forests for current and future generations.”
“The Town of Ayer is pleased to be a partner with the Devens Enterprise Commission on this important project, and the town would like to thank all the volunteers who have worked to make this project a reality,” Robert Pontbriand, Ayer Town Manager, said. “We also want to thank Gervais Ford for their sponsorship of this community celebration on April 27.”
The Ayer Devens Pocket Forest project is funded through the Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Action Grant program and is now in its second year with a greater vision – “Taking Root: Expanding the Ayer-Devens Pocket Forest”.
Over the next 18 months, the local project team will again work together with residents, businesses, schools, and community members to install four additional pocket forests (two in each community) and increase environmental and climate literacy by developing a project-specific educational curriculum to be used in local schools serving as a model for climate science/education across the country.
For additional information, visit climateresilient.wixsite.com.