Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn An Oasis for Birds and Birders | Page 21

People and Happenings
Birds and Beans
Boston-based Birds & Beans coffe e
is the only coffee brand in the entire country
which solely roasts ‘Bird Friendly ® ’ certified
beans. They roast and sell Smithsonian Mi-
gratory Bird Center certified shade grown
coffee, every bean in every bag, which is also
Fair-Trade and USDA Organic certified. Their
coffee is great for birds, people, and the Earth
– it’s great tasting, too!
“In 2008, Scott Weidensaul and I launched
Birds & Beans ® coffee to make it easy for
coffee drinkers in America to buy Smithsonian Migratory
Bird Center ‘Bird Friendly ® ’ coffee,” says co-owner Bill
Wilson. “Kenn Kaufman and Dr. Bridget Stutchbury joined
us in our mission. We have doubled sales year-on-year since
our launch. We continue to work with local and regional
‘Conservation Partners’ to promote Bird Friendly ® coffee.”
Every bean sold by Birds & Beans is certified by in-
dependent inspectors to meet the rigorous Smithsonian
Community Garden Grows and Gives
Those of you who drive down Grove Street in Watertown
with any frequency may have noticed the recent changes
happening just opposite of the Cemetery’s Grove Street
Gate. In October, Mount Auburn Hospital opened a satellite
parking lot for its employees on land leased from Mount
Auburn Cemetery. This parking lot is a temporary measure
with a maximum life-span of ten years, as per agreements
reached with the Town of Watertown. Another exciting
change, currently underway, is the development of a com-
munity garden on a smaller parcel of land adjacent to the
parking lot facility. For the duration of the parking lot’s ex-
istence, the Cemetery will lease (at no cost) a small piece of
land to Watertown Community Gardens (WCG),
a non-profit organization created to foster a network of gar-
dens and gardeners throughout Watertown. The Grove Street
Community Gardens, the second community garden established
by WCG, will provide gardening space for more than 30
Watertown individuals and households, from novice gardeners
to certified master urban gardeners. “This is a wonderful
standards. This is a certification based on decades of
objective scientific research. Bird Friendly ® cof-
fee means that migratory songbirds we know and
love have a better chance to survive while on their
wintering grounds in the tropics.
Their colleague Dr. Bridget Stutchbury, author
of Silence of the Songbirds and Professor at York
University, says the most important single step an
individual can do to help stop migratory song-
bird population loss is to always buy certified Bird
Friendly ® coffee. Tropical habitat destruction is
today’s biggest threat to neo-tropical migrants. The
massive shift to farm coffee on industrialized sun
filled fields requiring heavy chemicals me ans that most of
the coffee we drink in the U.S. is literally killing songbirds.
Today, almost all coffee on the shelves in the U.S. does not
meet ‘Bird Friendly ® ’ standards. For the past year, Birds &
Beans has generously donated all of the coffee served at the
Friends’public programs in addition to being the featured
coffee at our annual Coffeehouse celebrating National
Poetry Month in April.
opportunity for both
Watertown and the
Cemetery,” says Vice
President of External
Affairs Bree Harvey,
who is also a member
of the Grove Street
Gardens steering com-
mittee. “Mount Au-
burn will be partner-
Volunteers constructing garden beds in
ing with Watertown
early March. Photo © Leslie Horst.
Gardens to provide
appropriate educational opportunities for gardeners
looking for guidance on how to maintain a prolific and
environmentally-responsible garden. This is a wonderful op-
portunity for us to solidify our place in the community as an
important educational resource. And, speaking as a resident
of the town, I am quite excited that in some small way, the
Cemetery is helping to encourage more much-needed green
space in Watertown.” For more information about Watertown
Community Gardens, visit www.watertowngardens.org.
Spring/Summer 2012 | 19