Rock Garden
Franklin Park’s Rock Garden, the park’s only remaining pleasure garden, represents a golden era in Boston’s history, when citizens advocated for vibrant spaces at the city’s geographical center, supported by influential figures who left a lasting mark on the landscape.
Today, very few of the garden’s original plants remain, with most now considered invasive to the region. In partnership with the local Garden Club of America and the North American Rock Garden Society, we are working to rehabilitate this landscape into a functional and educational outdoor space that preserves the property’s historic character. This includes improving ADA accessibility, interpreting the Rock Garden’s history, repairing and restoring the water concourse, and creating a space for education and enjoyment.
A major portion of the Rock Garden is set to open to the public in 2025.
A Look Back
In 1910 the Boston Park Commission hired Arthur Schurcliff as the chief landscape architect for planning and designing Franklin Park’s zoological gardens. Shurcliff was a former apprentice in the Olmsted firm and worked closely with the Olmsted Brothers firm beginning in 1911 to plan the zoo along the area originally intended for Olmsted’s Greeting. In his General Plan for the Zoological Gardens, Schurcliff designed three distinct spaces: the herb garden, rose garden, and rock garden. Of these, only the rock garden remains today, having weathered decades of benign neglect. When it was completed in 1930, the Rock Garden spanned over half an acre atop a large hill and was considered one of the largest of its kind in the nation.
The Rock Garden was constructed with local stone called Roxbury Conglomerate, also informally known as Roxbury puddingstone, which is the official state rock of Massachusetts and a central characteristic design feature of this area. The garden, located in the geographical center of Boston, consisted of nearly 1,000 Roxbury puddingstone boulders and stones. The hillside was planted with a variety of genera suitable for rock gardens that were fashionable at the turn of the century including Berberis, Euonymus, Iberis, Juniperus, Phlox, and Dianthus.
The area also featured an elaborate water concourse with a bridge, pools, and waterfalls, as well as a folly. This folly, one of only two structures in the park predating its founding, originally belonged to the Lucius Manlius Sargent estate (1786–1867). It serves as a tangible connection to the legacy of Boston’s prominent Sargent family.
Revitalizing the Rock Garden
Over the past five years, Zoo New England has invested more than $200,000 to enhance the garden's water concourse, remove invasive plant species, improve ADA accessibility through selective grading, and make additional upgrades to transform the space into a welcoming venue for public use and events.
We’ve partnered with the Boston Committee of the Garden Club of America, which has generously awarded over $35,000 for a topographical survey, ADA-compliant grading, and planting projects aimed at controlling erosion on the steep hillsides. Additionally, we’ve partnered with the local chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society to enhance the garden's development and sustainability, including a $5,000 award for signage and plant labels.
