Green-Space Guru

BOSTON'S BEAUTIFUL PARKS and urban green spaces are a second home to Liza Meyer, the newest president of Friends of the Public Garden. She’s taken countless strolls through the Pinebank Promontory on Jamaica Pond, admired the ever-changing decorations on the Make Way for Ducklings statues in the Boston Public Garden and cheered her children on at sports games hosted on public fields.

Now Meyer will devote her love of the outdoors to the three parks under Friends of the Public Garden’s purview: the Boston Common, the Public Garden, and the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. “It will be wonderful to focus on these three parks, not just in one dimension, but across all the ways the organization supports these spaces, ensuring people have the fullest experience using and enjoying them,” she says.

Meyer came by her love of horticulture gradually, first by cultivating her own plants and interning at the Missouri Botanical Garden and later earning a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Washington.

The Needham native returned to the Boston area in 2002, first working in the private sector as a landscape architect for Sasaki Associates and then joining the City of Boston Parks and Recreation Department in 2008. She worked with the city until taking the helm with Friends of the Public Garden in May.

STORIED LEGACY, BRIGHT FUTURE

Meyer is only the third president of the organization, following in the footsteps of Henry Lee, who founded Friends of the Public Garden in 1970, and longtime president Liz Vizza. The organization works closely with the city’s parks and recreation department to maintain the horticulture and landscape of the parks as well as care for the public artworks and facilitate public programming in these spaces. Meyer says part of her role also will be to usher in a new generation of friends to the organization in preparation for future leadership.

Although Meyer has worked on all the parks and urban green spaces in Boston during her tenure with the city, many projects have already overlapped with Friends of the Public Garden, including the restoration of Boston Common’s Brewer Fountain, an 1868 sculpture by Michel Joseph Napoléon Liénard. Meyer worked with Friends of the Public Garden to repair the infrastructure of the previously nonfunctioning fountain and improve the plaza around it. Now the gentle trickle of water from the striking sculptural fountain is a sign of warm days in Boston.

Meyer also worked extensively on the Boston Common Master Plan, a detailed strategic plan for deploying $28 million to renovate and enhance Boston’s most historic gathering space. Meyer now hopes to be able to cross some of the plan’s elements off the list.

AN AMBITIOUS AGENDA

“This new role will be an opportunity for me to try to identify ways where we can pick up the pace and start to see not just capital improvements, but operational, maintenance and programming opportunities, all of which can come out of those plan recommendations,” says Meyer.

Those recommendations include things like developing the plaza around the Park Street MBTA stop, infrastructure improvements at Frog Pond for better seasonal functionality, the introduction of basketball courts to the Common and more.

Boston residents are particularly rich in green space. In 2018, the city marked the milestone of ensuring that every single resident living in Boston is within a 10-minute walk of a park, according to data from the Trust for Public Land. The three parks championed by Friends of the Public Garden represent ways for Bostonians to connect with nature, the seasons and the city’s rich history.

“Great parks are a reflection of a city’s values,” says Meyer. “When a city is investing in its green spaces, it shows that the city cares about civic life, believes in the importance of the public health benefits that green spaces provide, and believes in the importance of communities being able to come together around these shared spaces.”

Equity and inclusivity were pillars of Meyer’s work with the city and will continue to be an essential part of her mission. For the Boston Common, a large piece of that is making sure residents of Chinatown, one of the closest residential neighborhoods to the park, feel welcome and well served by the space.

Meyer looks forward to seeing the parks be well utilized and well loved by all Bostonians, from picnicking and riding the Swan Boats in the summer to sledding down the Boston Common hill in the winter.

“How do we do a better job of inviting everyone in and inviting people to stay and spend the day?” asks Meyer. “I think the ultimate goal is not just for people to pass through, but to feel like there’s a reason to linger and that they feel welcome to linger.”