Trail of Flowers Failures

Volunteer daffodil planters, fall of 2018

Hundreds of Mark's columns from his 12 years writing for the Beacon-Villager are accessible at maynardlifeoutdoors.com. The website includes an article directory by category (History, Nature, etc.). 

The Trail of Flowers (TOF) project (www.trailofflowers.com) had its beginnings when more than a dozen volunteers showed up in the fall of 2018 at the Marble Farm historic site to plant thousand of daffodils. Since then, close to $12,000 has been raised and spent to plant flowering bulbs, shrubs and trees at three sites in Acton, four in Maynard and two in Marlborough, all adjacent to the Assabet River Rail Trail (ARRT). Volunteers have been recruited via high school community service programs, garden clubs and residents interest in TOF. The Town of Hudson approved a site, but an inability to get a commitment from any volunteer group in Hudson led to that expansion being tabled. 

In the intervening years, amongst planting successes, there have been failures. Fall of 2021, nine small Kousa dogwoods were planted along High Street. These grew slowly, reaching heights of four to nine feet by fall of 2024. Winter of 2024-25 was a low snow year, and this gave rabbits access to the lower trunks of the trees. Come spring of 2025, all of the trees showed some gnawing damage, with two so extensive that no leaves appeared. Over the summer both of those put out new growth from the ground. A third - one of the tallest - mysteriously died in mid-summer. The remaining six had a sprinkling of flowers, with hopes for more as the trees mature, but there is always the risk of further rabbit depravations. Rabbits also decimated Eagle Scout planted weigela along High Street, but all of the plants recovered.

On the east side of where the Rail Trail crosses the river in Maynard there is a modest-sized grassy area with five large granite blocks - remnants of the railroad bridge that once crossed at the same site. In the fall of 2019 and again in 2020, tulip and grape hyacinth bulbs were planted amongst the blocks. Each year, the initial spring blooming was strong, but by the second spring the tulips were scant and the hyacinths diminished. By the third spring - worse. It is possible that the soil was contaminated from the railroad era's deposits of lead (from burning coal) and arsenic (used as a weed herbicide). There are no plans to try again. 

Extensive plantings between Summer and Concord streets suffer from competition from native and invasive species. At the north end, Virginia creeper vines overgrow the daylily bed unless cut back. Pokeweed pops up throughout. Further south, a large swath of Japanese knotweed (invasive) threatens daylily and iris plantings. English ivy is a slow-motion invasive ground cover that also forms vines which cling to tree trunks, causing damage. Maple trees overshade hophornbean trees, including the currently signed "Very Sad Tree." On a positive note, plantings of forsythia and beauty bush on the east side are thriving, and in doing so, contribute to blocking the view of the Enterprise and Emerald Acres parking areas. In time, the beauty bushes will be more than ten feet tall and wide. In late June these are covered in pink flowers favored by bees, bumblebees and hummingbirds. The forsythia, while celebrating early spring in yellow, are not pollinator friendly.

Winterberry is related to holly; it differs in that
the leaves fall off for winter. Male plants are
needed for the female plants to have berries.

In Acton, by the Sylvia Street parking area and access ramp, there have been a few failures, but in the main, the variety of flowering shrubs and trees are doing well. The row of winterberry display red berries in winter until either robins or cedar waxwings put in a hungry appearance. For robins, this used to mean "first robins of spring" but now ravenous hordes of non-migrating robins stay all winter, eating winterberry, Oriental bittersweet, multiflora rose hips, holly and juniper berries, etc.   

Also in Acton, north of the bridge over Fort Pond Creek, a long row of flowering "Double-Take" quince planted in the spring of 2024 are doing poorly. The summer drought hindered growth despite periodic watering. That winter saw deprivations by rabbits, which target the protein-rich bud ends of low branches, and then the summer drought of 2025 was an additional setback. There may also be an (untested) soil problem, as quince prefer slightly acidic soil. The growing season of 2026 may require soil treatment, fertilizer and weekly watering if the poorly-looking, foot-tall plants are ever to reach the promised height and width of four feet, creating, ideally, a striking flowering hedge. At one end of the row, a few flowering ninebark are doing somewhat better.

In Marlborough, six beauty bush plants, each about a foot tall, were planted at three locations near the south end of the Hudson/Marlborough end of ARRT in the fall of 2021. Despite notifying Marlborough's Dept. Public Works of the plantings and marking the plants with stakes, a visit during the summer of the next year found the stakes removed and the plants mowed over. The sites have not been since revisited to discover whether any recovered from the roots or continue to be mowed as part of DPW maintenance. A planting of daffodils with the help of the Marlborough Garden Club and another of grape hyacinth by Marlborough Girl Scouts probably both need refreshing.    

Tulips and sculpture inside the fence
at the Marble Farm Historic Site

Tulips, unless planted in the best of growing conditions, fail after a few years. Typically, a large bed of the same type will display height-, size- and timing-matched blooms the first year. By second year there may be variations. By third year some will refuse to bloom at all, instead displaying only one large leaf. By fourth year, if not dug up and all bulbs discarded and replaced, the entire bed may have failed. Part of the tulip plantings inside the fence at the Marble Farm Historic Site failed prematurely in the second year, so that bed was dug up and replanted with 200 bulbs in the fall of 2025. Fingers crossed for a good display next spring.    

Extensive tree plantings pre-date Trail of Flowers. Clearing space for construction of the Rail Trail in Maynard included removal of more than 600 trees of more than four inches in diameter that had grown next to and between the rails in the 50+ years since the last train passed. The budget to create the trail included planting of 600 trees in Acton and Maynard in 2017, at a cost of about $200,000. Roughly 15% died from being planted in areas too wet, too dry, too shaded, etc. Others were smothered by over-growing Oriental bittersweet vines. However, the majority are thriving; the firs and spruces, initially 5-6 feet tall, are mostly 10-15 feet tall as of fall 2025.

Tulip trees (yellow poplars) that were initially 2-3 inches in diameter are now topping 6 inches. Four of these are in the green-space south of Concord Street. Once mature, they will display tulip-shaped flowers in spring, a striking yellow leaf color in fall, and can easily top 75 feet in height. Tulip trees are messy - dropping flowers, sap, leaves and wind-snapped branches - and are also susceptible to tipping over in strong wind storms. 

TOF donations welcome! Checks to be made out to Assabet River Rail Trail Inc and mailed to David Mark, 10 Maple Street, Maynard MA 01754. (ARRT is the parent organization for Trail of Flowers, and is a 501(c)(3) organization.) Or donate via PayPal to damark51@gmail.com or Venmo to www.venmo.com/u/DavidAMark51.  

 

  

Maynard's House Prices

In my 2011 book "Maynard:History and Life Outdoors" I included an observation on comparing Maynard to the neighboring towns of Acton, Concord, Sudbury and Stow. That table included area, population, population per square mile, percent rentals, median house prices and median household income. The information was sourced from 2010 data from city-data.com. The question, then, is how have things changed over the intervening 15 years? 

  TOWN      AREA    POPULATION   POP/SQ MI   %RENTALS   MED. HOUSE   MED. INCOME

   Maynard     5.2 sq.mi.    10,100             1,942              30%              $308,000           $  78,100

   Acton        19.8               20,400            1,030               24                   536,000             117,500

   Concord    25.0               17,500               700               19                   725,000             123,200

   Sudbury    24.3               17,300               710                 8                   692,000             152,200

   Stow         17.6                 6,100                350              13                   485,000              123,600

Maple Street house purchased from builder in 1870. The left side
displays additions, as the first floor replaced a porch with a TV room 
on a concrete slab, and the second floor replaced an attic room
with a bathroom and a walk-in closet with a clothes washer/dryer. Behind 
the TV room, the kitchen was extended 12 feet past the foundation. The
original purchase price in 1870 was $2,430; estimate now >$700,000.

From the above, one could have referred to Maynard as "the low cost hole in the middle of a high cost donut." As far as housing costs, the high-to-low order was Concord, Sudbury, Acton, Stow and Maynard, with the first two having a median house value of more than twice that of Maynard. For a recent year, city-data is incomplete on median values, but Zillow provides average values for 2025 through September. The high-to-low order is the same: Concord $1,440,000, Sudbury $1,135,000, Acton $864,000, Stow $811,000, and lastly Maynard at $600,000.  

Average sales prices cannot be directly compared to median sales prices because a handful of extra-high sales will shift the average higher than the median (which is a value with half of sales above and half below). In Concord, there are sales of homes in the multiple-millions. Even in Maynard, in 2025 there have already been sales of homes, mostly much newer and larger than most of Maynard's housing stock, and near the Sudbury border, in the range of  $850,000 to $950,000. Regardless, the general picture is that Maynard, while having crept comparatively closer to the others, is still a low-cost option. 

As for population growth, the 2020 census pegged Maynard at 10,745, Acton at 24,021, Concord at 18,491, Sudbury at 18,934 and Stow at 7,174. Thus, Acton and Stow grew by about 17% and the others under 10%. Maynard has since crossed 11,000 (its highest population ever) with the addition of several apartment projects at Maynard Crossing and elsewhere, but still under 10% growth compared to 2010. Given the limited availability of developable land, and perhaps limits on its water supply, Maynard may never top 12,000. Note that for Massachusetts as a whole, predictions for the next 25 years are no population growth - basically flat at seven million. 

On an interesting local history note, because Maynard was an early industry town surrounded by farm and orchard towns, until after World War II the population of Maynard was larger than the combined populations of Acton, Stow and Sudbury. Only after WWII did those become fast-growing commuter suburbs.

Predicting the future of housing prices is difficult. Recent government policy on legal immigration and actions against non-legal immigration will have a massive effect on U.S. population predictions, and thus on demand for housing; the latter affecting whether the value of housing increases faster, the same or lower than the inflation rate. For a country with no immigration, population maintenance calls for 2.1 births per woman. Many countries - including the U.S. - are now well below this rate.* Countries in Europe and the far East have 'empty' villages with no children being born, and have shrinking cities. For the United States - until this year - immigration (legal and illegal) compensated for the declining birth rate, but with immigration stalled and birthrates in immigrant families becoming Americanized, it is not impossible to imagine that inflation-adjusted housing prices could peak in the future and decline thereafter, paralleling a peak and then a decline in population.

Japan is a good example, with population peaking circa 2010 at 128 million and a decline expected to reach 106 million by 2050. Prolonged low birth rates lead to a higher percentage of older people in the total population. Already, an estimated 10 million house properties are empty - abandoned by heirs when their aged parents die.

*At https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison/ the United States ranks 133rd with 1.84 births per woman. Japan is at 1.40 and South Korea at 1.12.