2024 Annual Meeting & 65th Anniversary
Event Details
Sunday, October 20, 2024
1:00 pm
Shaw Land, Concord
Free. Member event. RSVP here.
This event will occur rain or shine. Please dress for weather conditions.
The business meeting and serving of refreshments will take place under a tent. Umbrellas are encouraged if it rains for the walking program.
Parking is available on Simon Willard Road, around the triangle. Carpooling is encouraged. Meet under the tent on Shaw Land.
Join us in celebrating the Land Trust’s 65th anniversary and our achievements over the past year. We will also review the Land Trust’s financial performance and elect trustees.
After the business meeting, trustees will lead a tour of the Shaw Land area, where invited speakers will highlight its distinctive features, ecology, and generous land donations. We’ll conclude with a special celebration and homemade treats prepared by the trustees. Each member household will receive a celebratory gift as an expression of appreciation from the Land Trust!
1:00 PM Business meeting
1:30 PM Walking tour of the Shaw Land area
2:45 PM Refreshments served
The business meeting will begin promptly; other times are approximate.
Walk Descriptions
Jeff Collins
Nature’s bounty
As an example of beautiful riparian habitat, Brooks-Hudson Meadow buffers the Sudbury River and is characterized by its distinctive ecology. The meadow provides ideal habitat for invertebrates and offers essential ecological services. Explore the meadow’s features to gain a deeper understanding of this protected landscape.
Richard T. T. Forman
Pondering hill, water, stones, trees from the Shaw Land perspective
We’ll try to see or visualize these intriguing features. In the 1600s, why camp or reside here? Inside Nashawtuc Hill. Rainwater routes. Finding a spring-seep-wellhole site. Gneiss (say nice) & granite. A native tree I never found in 30 Concord natural areas. Pasture and edge trees. How old are the big pines (& oaks)?
Joan Ferguson
Tour of Sachem Trail properties
Take a longer walk along Sachem Trail, meandering past Shaw Pasture, through the Assabet Woodlot, over Edelman Woods, and past French’s Meadow. Continue along Brooks-Hudson Meadow before returning to Shaw Land.
John Stevens
Preserving land for 65 years
Conservation of land on and around Nashawtuc Hill did not begin until after the area had been developed for residential use. But it wasn’t too late. Land preservation around the Hill began in the year of the Land Trust’s foundation and has continued and expanded for the subsequent 65 years.
Walk Leader Bios
Jeff Collins is the former Senior Director of Conservation Science at Mass Audubon. He is a landscape ecologist and conservation planner whose interdisciplinary approach to landscape inventory and conservation planning has been applied on public, private, and institutional lands throughout the state. Jeff also serves on the board of OARS and is a member of the MA Department of Conservation & Recreation Stewardship Council, a citizen advisory council appointed by the governor.
Richard T. T. Forman, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, pioneered several ecological fields with numerous articles and books, including: Landscape Ecology, Land Mosaics, Road Ecology, Mosaico territorial para la region metropolitana de Barcelona, Urban Regions, Urban Ecology, and Towns, Ecology, and the Land. In Concord, he led or helped lead (1992–2004) two town Open Space Plans, Historic Resources Masterplan, Concord’s Mill Brook, and (in 2021) co-authored Ecology along Concord Trails.
Joan Ferguson has served as trustee of the Land trust for 25 years and was chair for several of those years. Joan and her husband, John, have lived in Concord for over 40 years. Joan is a retired landscape architect and knows the landscape of Concord well. She has served on the Concord Natural Resources Commission, the Concord Planning Board and several of the task forces that wrote Concord’s Open Space and Recreation Plan.
John Stevens has served as a trustee of the Land Trust for 30 years and was chair for 14 of those years. He and his wife, Dinny, have lived beneath Nashawtuc Hill, looking over the Brooks-Hudson Meadow at a bend in the Sudbury River for 44 years. Decades practicing environmental law reinforced John’s commitment to the importance of preserving open land.
