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.
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.
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.
SEED Project Scope:
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, 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.