A Refreshed and Much-improved Library Park Has Been Reopened, but New Park Furniture Is Still on Back Order and Trees Are Awaiting their Pruning

A broad plaza/walkway leads from the South End branch to the park entrance at Rutland Square. The chairs in the image were in good-enough condition to preserve for the newly improved park.

A broad plaza/walkway leads from the South End branch to the park entrance at Rutland Square. The chairs in the image were in good-enough condition to preserve for the newly improved park.

Library Park was reopened to the public featuring a beautiful wide concrete walkway plaza with new paver detail strips that have replaced the broken bluestone surface and worn-out concrete-and-brick benches of previous decades. Four black single seats that were in Library Park before have been re-installed, and as soon as new park benches and cafe tables arrive from the back-order planet they, too, will become part of the green space's landscape. 

The new furniture for Library Park will be added to the already installed chairs saved from the previous park layout.

The new furniture for Library Park will be added to the already installed chairs saved from the previous park layout.

The contractors laid down a new sub-base for the plaza and amended the impoverished soil where plantings struggled to live. A huge load of mulch has topped off the garden areas to help new plantings thrive and shine. How to landscape the park will be the subject of discussion this fall with the Parks Department, the BPL (which officially owns the site) and the FOSEL board.

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There are still several projects left to be done, including the pruning of the trees which. according to Lauren Bryant, the Parks Department's project manager for Library Park, will be done in the next couple of weeks. The brick edging along Rutland Square will be reset for a smooth transition into the park. In addition, the two LightWells, for which the electrical wiring has been placed underground by the contractors, will need to be refurbished and the areas around them re-landscaped.  Once upon a time, before the rats chewed through their wiring and vandals tried to skateboard over them, they were nicely landscaped seating areas that glowed in a series of hues through the night.