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