The Trustees

We're excited to launch Urban Outdoors, a Trustees initiative advancing urban conservation through community-based partnerships across Massachusetts.

Rooted in the idea that conservation begins where people live, learn, and gather, Urban Outdoors works alongside local organizations to expand access to nature, support community stewardship, and help care for urban green spaces.

This week, we're celebrating two exciting partnership kickoffs: June 23 with Nuestras Raíces in Holyoke and June 24 with Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust in Springfield.

Follow along on our stories over the next two days for on-the-ground highlights, community voices, and a look at how these partnerships are powering community-led access to nature, food, and climate action.

Urban Outdoors: Conservation Rooted in Cities. Learn more about Urban Outdoors by visiting https://thetrustees.org/urban-outdoors/

📷: Boston Community Gardens

| [Description: Groups of community members gather in a sunny urban garden, sharing conversation in a shaded circle and posing with a hefty harvest of just-picked zucchini.]

To every dad, granddad, and father figure who taught us that the great outdoors is even greater when it's shared: Happy Father's Day. Whether your perfect day is a long hike, a quiet morning of birdsong, or slow canoe ride down the river, we hope today holds a little of it. Thank you for being the ones who got us outside in the first place.

📷: Bartholomew's Cobble, Sheffield

| [Image description: An adult and a child explore a sandy riverbank together on a summer day, a canoe pulled ashore behind them and tree-lined banks across the water.]

Here comes the sun, and it's sticking around a while. Tomorrow, June 21, is the summer solstice: the longest day of the year and the official start of summer. It's the most daylight we'll see all year, and we can't think of a better way to spend it than outside. From the Berkshires to the coast, our trails, gardens, farms, and beaches are here to be shared, for everyone, forever. So set your alarm a touch earlier and soak up every last hour of it.

📷: Doane’s Falls – credit: James Walsh; Tully Lake, Royalston – credit: Frederick Watson; Crane Beach, Ipswich – credit: New England Photography; World’s End, Hingham – credit: K. Glass; Peaked Mountain, Monson – credit: Lee Ann Gale

| [Image description: A waterfall spilling over mossy rock ledges into a calm pool, framed by green summer trees. A wildflower meadow at dusk under a dramatic, cloud-streaked sky, with a lone tree silhouetted against the setting sun. The sun low on the horizon over rippled tidal flats, golden light spread across the patterned wet sand. A glowing orange sunset over open water, with a distant city skyline along the far shore. Morning fog settling into rolling hills beneath a bright sun, red-tinged foliage in the foreground.]

Recently, under a green tent at Nightingale Community Gardens in Dorchester, neighbors gathered the way Juneteenth has always asked us to: with food, with music, with one another.

Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, the day enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas learned of their freedom, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. It is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States, and it remains a time for reflection and rejoicing, for education and for honoring Black freedom, resilience, and joy.

A jazz band played. A child learned to tie knots at an activity table. Plates were passed and stories were shared. Gatherings like this are how a community holds the weight of the past and the joy of the present at the same time.

Wherever you find yourself this Juneteenth, we invite you to spend the day however feels right for you: reflecting, celebrating, learning, or simply being present with the people around you.

📷: Nightingale Community Gardens, Dorchester

[Image description: Four images of an outdoor community garden event, showing a crowd among garden plots, a band performing live, and visitors gathered under Trustees tents.]

Happy National Fresh Veggies Day! We think every day is a good day to eat your greens, but today we're especially proud of where ours come from. Our Summer Vegetable Shares are picked at peak freshness across our working farms, grown with soil health and biodiversity in mind through practices like crop rotation, cover cropping, and pollinator strips. Market-style shares mean you take what you love and leave what you don't, from herbs and field fruits to whatever's thriving that week. Fresh, local, and rooted in care for the land.

📷: Appleton Farms, Ipswich

[Photo of a greenhouse with tomato plants inside showing rows of lavender being grown in the foreground.]

Travel back to America's most opulent era with author, garden designer, and speaker Jana Milbocker , who brings her newest book, Gardens of the Gilded Age, to Castle Hill on the Crane Estate in Ipswich .

Her richly illustrated talk wanders through the spectacular estates and storied landscapes designed for families like the Cranes, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers, along with the visionary architects and designers who made them legendary. You'll uncover the histories behind these remarkable gardens and the people who shaped them, then meet Jana herself at a book signing once the talk wraps.

Pre-order your copy for pickup at the event. Additional copies will be available in the Castle Hill Gift Shop.

Come early to wander the gardens and grounds. Sip lemonade and enjoy complimentary cookies. Make a day of it: gather your friends, wear your finest garden hat or fascinator, and snap a commemorative photo together at our "flower photo arch."

Chat with our horticulture team out in the gardens. Wednesday, June 17 | 6PM - Register today: https://thetrustees.org/event/445542/

📷: Castle Hill on the Crane Estate, Ipswich

[Image description: A set of four images showing colorful spring gardens, tulip beds, and a historic brick estate house, alongside a green graphic announcing the Gardens of the Gilded Age book launch and lecture.]

This year, the longest day of the year is also a day for Dad. 🌞 Sunday, June 21 brings both Father's Day and the summer solstice, which means extra daylight to spend with the Dads and Dad figures in your life.

Make a day of it at one of our properties with pizza, bluegrass, or yoga. Find a one-of-a-kind gift in our online and property shops, from fresh local food to special finds, or share a full year of beautiful places with a Trustees Gift Membership.

And thanks to the Highland Street Foundation, admission to Fruitlands Museum in Harvard and Bartholomew's Cobble in Sheffield is free in honor of Father's Day.

See all our Father's Day happenings here: https://thetrustees.org/program/fathers-day-events/

Father's Day Events Celebrate Father's Day with a one-of-a-kind experience, from brunch to beer tasting, Bluegrass tunes, and more.

A new figure has arrived at deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum in Lincoln. Torch raised, tablet fallen, Channel Liberty (with Fallen Arm) by Arlene Shechet is now on view at deCordova.

The work channels the iconic presence of the Statue of Liberty, but with a twist. Where Lady Liberty's left arm once cradled the Declaration of Independence, here that arm has fallen in distress. The figure still lifts her torch defiantly toward the sky, even as the arm bearing the tablet collapses beneath her.

Shechet is known for combining disparate elements into boundary-collapsing paradoxes, sculptures that feel set in motion while standing perfectly still. Come sit with the contradictions.

📷: Channel Liberty (with Fallen Arm); installation view, Full Steam Ahead, Madison Square Park, New York, NY, September 25, 2018—April 28, 2019. Photograph by Nicholas Knight.

| [Image description: A bronze sculpture of a Statue of Liberty figure raises her torch toward the sky while the arm holding the tablet has fallen and collapsed at her side. The figure stands on an open paved plaza.]