~Photos by Claudia Ferro

The Somerville Arts Council and the Somerville Office of Sustainability and Environment presented the Tiny Great Outdoors Festival, a free Arbor Day and SustainaVille event, at the city’s tiniest “urban wild,” Quincy Street Open Space on  Sunday, April 23.

Attendees joined scientists on tiny hikes in the park exploring wildlife here in Somerville, and learned how global warming is changing the environment, even in our backyards. Others helped plant a tree and took home free seedlings, and participated in activities, games, and art.

The scientists and wildlife experts that led visitors on tiny hikes through the park during the event included:

• Bryan Hamlin, former chairman of the Friends of the Middlesex Fells and past president of the New England Botanical Club, who has helped lead a census of all the plants in the Fells
• Sasha Vivelo, a Ph.D. student in Boston University’s Department of Biology researching how the growth of mushrooms and other fungi affect ecosystems and climate
• Jef Taylor, of Boston’s Urban Nature Walks group, a naturalist specializing in urban wildlife, bugs, mushrooms, creepy crawlies, and weird stuff, who has been leading hikes around these parts since 2003
• Rachel Taylor, the City of Somerville’s Animal Control Officer and Inspector
• Vanessa Boukili, an urban forestry and landscape planner and conservation agent for the City of Somerville
• Andy Reinmann, a forest ecologist at Boston University, where he researches the effects of urbanization and climate change on forest growth.

Visitors to the festival planted trees with City of Somerville Urban Forestry and Landscape Planner Vanessa Boukili, painted animals with Somerville artist Johanna Finnegan-Topitzer, and tried out worm-bin composting with Groundwork Somerville.

Participants also learned how we can reduce our carbon output and live more sustainably by playing educational games presented by the city’s SustainaVille program. Somerville artist Rachel Mello exhibited art depicting bees, ants, and inch-worms made from recycled advertising banners to address reuse and recycling.

The idea for the Tiny Great Outdoors Festival was dreamed up by Greg Cook, the freelance event planner behind Somerville’s Pity Party in 2015 and Tiny Tall Ships Festival in 2016. He created the festival to celebrate “urban wilds,” a term for what are often small pockets of nature within our cities. The Quincy Street Open Space is one of these urban nature parks. Located on the site of a burned-down house, it’s been reclaimed as a tiny sustainable woodland landscape created in a dense, residential urban neighborhood.