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Lowell’s Big Plans By James Ostis Lowell was the most significant planned industrial city in the early United States. In the 1820s, a group of Boston investors set their sights on the water power potential of the Merrimack River and systematically created a new community based on maximizing the development…
Read More »Around 1996, there was a lot of activity flowing from an idea about transforming Lowell into “The Flowering City,” with a new effort to enhance the parks, forest, waterways, gardens. The thinking was that the community was ready to shift its attention from 20 years of bricks-and-mortar rehab and redevelopment…
Read More »On Saturday, April 18, 1998, about 100 people attended a “town meeting” called “What Does the Internet Mean for Lowell?” at the O’Leary Library of UMass Lowell. The gathering was sponsored by the UMass Lowell Psychology Dept. Community Outreach Laboratory, Flowering City Steering Committee, New England Foundation for the Arts…
Read More ». . . And, garden pictures from Back Central in this video. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5KJBtfasok[/youtube]
Read More »Congratulations and thank you to the many people of all ages who helped build community gardens and cleaned up neighborhoods on a beautiful spring Saturday. I visited the garden-making sites in the Acre, where dozens of volunteers were banging together planting beds, hauling loads of fresh loam, clearing weeds and…
Read More »“East Merrimack Street Bridge” by Richard Marion (c) 2013 See more artwork at www.richardmarion.net This image was created in response to the visionary urban beautification plan called “Lowell: The Flowering City,” published in the mid-1990s. Readers may have seen the logo of the project on a large sign at the…
Read More »The low-rise roses blooming at the South Common along the new sidewalk on Thorndike Street are the Frau Dagmar Hartopp (or Fru Dagmar Hastrup) variety of rugosa roses that produce very fragrant silvery pink flowers on a rugged bright green shrub. The plant was “discovered” by Mr Hastrup of Denmark and named…
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