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Dorchester Community History Garden

The Pear Square Collaborative, Inc. (PSC) has embarked on a project that will convert Dorchester's Richardson Park into a “Dorchester Community History Garden”. We envisage the history garden as a cultural asset that generates awareness, among Dorchester's diverse communities, of their own respective histories as a source of self-empowerment, and as a path to mutual empathy and unity. 

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In 2025, a State earmark grant enabled PSC to contract with Sasaki Associates to prepare a pre-design plan for the project. The plan lays out a blueprint for a large, complex undertaking, ultimately incorporating four landscape typologies: an historical trail, cultural gardens, art installations, and activation. It charts project phases, projected costs and grant funding stages; details critical project resources, e.g. funding and funding sources; and defines the roles and responsibilities of essential stakeholders and collaborators. Click here to see Sasaki's pre-design plan.

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Kicking off implementation of the pre-design plan, PSC has accepted the Sasaki Foundation’s offer to make available the services of advanced trainees in its “SEED” student intern program to formulate concepts for history garden design. 

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SEED Project Scope:

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SEED interns will develop concepts for a pedestrian friendly history corridor that will: 

  • Connect existing historically significant features

  • Expand the thematic range to reflect a more complete representation of the Dorchester community

  • Create an ambience of beauty and culture

  • Invite people of all ages to learn, research, and discover

  • Help generate a path to empathy and shared understanding

  • Express Dorchester’s history and a hopeful vision for its future

 

The SEED team will conduct its study over the summer, and has scheduled three community meetings: 

  • Site Visit: Monday, July 6th, 2026, 1:00 p.m - 3:00 p.m.

  • Mid-Review Presentation: July 22nd, 10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

  • Final Product Presentation: August 13th, 10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m., at the William Clapp House, 195 Boston Street

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