Landscape architects presented a vision for Walker Pond, Watertown’s newest outdoor space, where visitors would have different experiences in various parts of the park on the westside of town.
The meeting on Feb. 5 was the third one for Walker Pond, and designers presented the preferred design, known as Forest Park. The option was much preferred to the Green Hill Discovery, which had an elevated area and more emphasis on grassy space. Both options were presented at the second community meeting on Nov. 6, 2025.
Forest Park will add more trees, and features are discovered as you move around the park, said Letitia Tormay, senior project manager from IMEG, which was formerly known as Warner Larson Landscape Architects.
“It’s not a traditional park where things are all revealed to you immediately when you enter,” Tormay said. “They’re more things that you discover, moments of play, an area for picnics, an area for reflection, even the community garden.”
The changes to the design were made after feedback from the second community meeting, which was attended by about 45 people, and from more than 600 surveys after the first and second community meetings, said Watertown Community Engagement Specialist Tyler Cote.
“We had 316 respondents on our second survey. That’s more than we had on the first first survey, which was also over 300 which means we had over 600 survey responses over the course of this project,” Cote said. “Fifty four percent say that they strongly like the Forest Park, and 31 saying that they like it. And we’re seeing over 80% of people seem to be preferring or liking.”
Other features that people strongly supported were a boardwalk around the pond, native plantings, pollinator gardens, wooded areas and natural space, and areas for children to play. They were more mixed on the inclusion of a lawn area, whether gathering places should be closer or farther from the water, and whether or not to preserve the existing structure on the site.
David Warner, Principal in Charge for IMEG, said the latest version of the park focused on the Forest Park idea, but included parts of the Green Hill Discovery proposal.
“The Forest Park (plan), the idea was to really focus on re-vegetating a lot of the site with trees bringing in more of the forest,” Warner said. “It ended up with a smaller but more usable lawn area in the middle. And this could be a natural grass lawn, and it can be used for things like volleyball or something like that. It’s not a big field complex by any means.”
The pollinator garden was initially included in the Green Hill Discovery plan, and now is part of the Forest Park designs.
At previous meetings, people said they wanted to reduce the amount of paved parking areas, Tormay said, and they wanted to feature the pollinator garden. The pollinator garden will be one of the gateways to the park being situated next to the parking lot.
“So that’s really what welcomes you into the park. The community garden space is nestled in sort of the center of the pollinator area, and then the lawn is in the center (of the park),” Tormay said. “And we’ve looked at different ways that can be a really flexible, usable space that you could lay yoga mats out on. You could bring an informal volleyball net to on the weekends.”
The design also has space for people to have picnics. At previous meetings people spoke about having a place to sit in the shade, especially as newly planted trees mature.
One area where shade could be provided is the former maintenance structure. Tormay said designers are looking at whether it is structurally feasible to turn it into a pavilion. Designers called it the Forest Room.
“The Forest Room, which is the existing structure out there, which has these really beautiful moments to it in the fall: the oaks around it, the leaves are the same color as the metal on the steel, so that have these really beautiful existing out there, beautiful moments of nature,” Tormay said.
The boardwalk will go around the pond, and there will be an overlook on the southern end of the pond, Tormay said. The boardwalk would connect to six walkways in the site.
The park will also have a space for quiet time, Tormay said.
“We call it a reflective garden. That could be an area for meditation, an area for a labyrinth, something that’s quieter next to the kettle pond, kind of nestled in the really beautiful oaks that are out there to be a moment for bird group or meditation group or an outdoor classroom,” Tormay said.
A popular request was a set of swings, which has been included in the most recent plans.
Bathrooms are in the plan, but Tormay said it hasn’t been determined if they will be temporary or permanent.
Tormay also mentioned that the Walker Pond Project has been selected by the Charles River Watershed Association as a 2026 priority project.
“Each year, the Charles River Watershed Association selects priority sites to do kind of a deeper dive into to see the potential for increasing flood storage if there’s a potential for wetland mitigation, improvements to water, improvements to areas that currently flood,” Tormay said. “So in 2026 Walker Pond is actually one of the areas that’s been selected for further study, because lot of reasons: it checked off a lot of the boxes, it’s bigger than an acre, it’s an open public space, it’s where it’s sited, and also it has an active community engagement and a design around it.”
Hardy Pond in Waltham was selected as a priority project in a previous year.
After the presentation, attendees broke into several groups to discuss what they liked and disliked in the latest proposal, and what they would like to add.
Some wanted restrooms with running water so that users of the community garden could wash their hands.
They also asked if there was an opportunity for overflow parking at a nearby lot such as at BJ’s Wholesale Club, Watertown Ford, or the other lots in the area.
Some requested information to be posted in the park about the history of the area.
The preference for the play structure was for more of a natural look, such as something that looked like logs, and not a big structure or something that looked like a bird (though one group liked the idea of a big bird).
Some suggested extending the boardwalk over the pond, and more than one group brought up the desire for a water feature.
See the slide presentation from the third Walker Pond Community Meeting here. More information about the project, including videos of the three meetings, can be found at watertown-ma.gov/1423/Walker-Pond