The birth of magnolias on Commonwealth Avenue

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April 23, 2008 12:58 PM

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(John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

By Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

The bright burst of pink magnolia blossoms on Commonwealth Avenue has become one of Boston’s rites of spring. The annual canopy of flowers makes the stately brownstones and ornate street lamps of Back Bay seem almost new.

The trees are the legacy of Laura Dwight, a Detroit native who lived in an apartment on Commonwealth Avenue and died 25 years ago at age 84. In 1963, Dwight was upset by the decline of her once-elegant neighborhood and fought back by planting magnolia trees, which cost $8 to $20 apiece. She enlisted the help of volunteers from an MIT fraternity.

Here are excepts from a story published in the Globe in March 1995 that recounted Dwight’s story:

Every spring, April on Commonwealth Avenue brings magnolia blossoms, cream and raspberry against the brownstones lining the sunny side of the street.
It seems like a tradition as old as Back Bay, but it isn't. The avenue has been a magnolia display place for only three decades, thanks to a woman named Laura Dwight, who spearheaded the drive to plant the elegant Magnolia x soulangiana, saucer magnolias, back in 1963.

Dwight's trees cost $8 to $20 each, depending on size. To plant them, Dwight organized volunteers from an MIT fraternity whose house was on the avenue.
Dwight had read somewhere that Boston was about as far north as magnolias would survive. Despite some argument with friends about which variety would do best (or perhaps whether dogwoods might be better), she chose the saucer magnolia plus a few star magnolias here and there. Some dogwoods were planted on the shaded south side of the street, but they have proved far less eye-catching.

Dwight died in 1983 at the age of 84. Although she was descended from the John Dwight who settled Dedham in 1634, she was born in Detroit and only returned to Boston, a lady of independent means, later in life. Settled into an apartment on Commonwealth Avenue, she became distressed -- some say irate -- by the decline of this once-elegant neighborhood.

Built as upscale private townhouses, the brownstones had fallen out of favor with the wealthy and had been converted to small college dormitories, fraternity houses, apartments and even rooming houses for transients. Dwight became an early and active member of the Neighborhood Association of Back Bay, dedicated to turning the area around.

Her success with magnolia planting led her to organize the Back Bay garden club in 1967. A few years later she co-founded the Friends of the Public Garden, the organization credited with reviving and preserving the neglected Common and Garden.

Saucer magnolias, developed in 1820, were the first magnolia hybrid ever produced, according to Judith Leet, a writer for Arnold Arboretum's magazine Arnoldia. Though the variety has done well on Commonwealth Avenue, the garden clubbers plan to shift to a different and reportedly superior type, Magnolia x loebneri 'Leonard Messel.' It is a more recent chance hybrid that occurred in the garden of Messel, an English horticulturist.