The greenest municipal building in the city of Boston, The George Robert White Environmental Conservation Center lies in an unusual space-where there used to be hospitals. It’s an environmental resource in the middle of a city that gives the public an opportunity to see what an open space looks like in the middle of an urban area. The Boston Nature Center has 67 Acres of land. This building is special because it provides a template for future green buildings.

What makes this place unique? Perhaps it’s the geothermal heat pumps or the solar thermal panels on the roof, or the fact that some of it is made out of recycled materials. As I walked around with the sanctuary director, Julie Brandlen, I was amazed at how concealed these things were. It’s not like you can recognize that the building is a green building when you see it, it’s not pudgy because of extra equipment, or small because lack of money. It’s designed to conserve energy, but still takes nothing away from the building’s architectural integrity.

It is probably the spirit here that has most caught my attention. The center works closely with students to provide information on topics from local plant life to man’s role in the environment. BNC wants to get involved in something that is lacking in our present day education: hands-on experience. Students learn about the environment through textbooks, quizzes, and tests, but here they are given a unique opportunity to see a turtle they’ve read about up close, or walk through vegetation they’ve only seen on TV.

Julie believes we need to do what we can, because everything doesn’t always come back the same way it used to be. Just like the actual landscape of the BNC, it is made up of old vegetation and new upcoming trees and plants, so there is this opportunity to observe something growing in its beginning state.

The Boston Nature Center has community at its heart. It instructs teachers to communicate with students, and then students communicate with families, creating a web of positive influences. From my experience there I can gather, the building is amazing, the mission is good for the environment as well as the community. And the potential research is limitless.

The Visitor Center is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, Sunday, and Monday holidays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The trails are open every day from dawn to dusk.

Julie encourages people to come in and tour the building. If you want to learn how technology can help the environment, I suggest you take a tour. For the outdoor enthusiast, they have two and a half miles of trails and boardwalks. Wild turkeys and hawks are some visitors you might see purveying the land like yourself. They have 20 acres of wet meadows and encourage local students to conduct research.

The BNC is a great place for research; their regional scientist is in the process of producing an ecological management plan, which will be available to the general public when it’s complete. The scientist has divided the 67 acres into vegetative units, which will help distinguish what type of plant life will be located in a certain area. The Boston Nature center loves working with schools and the director Julie Brandlen told me she’d love to see UMass get involved in research.

The BNC provides opportunity to step outside yourself for a moment and look at the big picture. As I walked the trail I couldn’t get over how much land was in the middle of the city. It is important that we preserve this land not only for the research, or for what we get out of it, but for the surrounding wildlife.

Some future adult programs might include a lecture on Rachel Carlson and a lecture exploring Gandhi, Thoreau, and Martin Luther King. The BNC’s goal is not to make everyone a tree hugger; they want to foster a personal connection with nature.

We’ve all driven by places and said “yeah I’d like to go in there, but not today”. Well this is what the Boston Nature Center was like for me. Sometimes we get overrun with all of these things we need to do and we don’t find time for ourselves. When I went up to the BNC I didn’t have a profound experience and discover myself or my true purpose, but I did forget about all those little things that usually bog me down. So silence the troublesome mind and check out the Boston Nature Center.