Despite an overcast day, Jeanine and I spent the afternoon walking the grounds of the 281 acre Arnold Arboretum located in Jamaica Plains.

The Arboretum was established in 1872 when the trustees of the will of James Arnold (1781-1868), a whaling merchant of New Bedford, Massachusetts, transferred a portion of his estate to Harvard College. Arnold envisioned a park which contained “all the trees and shrubs . . . either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air. The Arboretum is now part of the famous “Emerald Necklace,” a 7-mile-long network of parks and parkways designed by Frederick Law Olmsted for the Boston Parks Department.

On our drive home we passed through the Chestnut Hill and Fisher Hill neighborhoods where we paused at the Fisher Hill Reservoir Park. The reservoir was built in 1888 to supply water for Brookline and retired in 1970. It was recently transformed into a public park containing a soccer field with spectator seating on the sloped landform, surrounded by various landscapes: a reconstructed woodland, meadow, and wet meadow. The original gatehouse (pictured below) is listed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks.