BOYLSTON, Mass. - New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston is the first in the country to be certified as a Green Zone by the American Green Zone Alliance.

A Green Zone means routine maintenance is performed with low impact equipment. The garden began its journey toward Green Zone certification in 2020.

Over the past few years, they've replaced, or begun the process of replacing, their gas-powered landscaping equipment with battery-powered electric models.

"We're recognizing the fact we've made this commitment," Mark Richardson, director of horticulture, said. "We've changed a lot of our operations so we're not omitting as much carbon and really trying to use our platform to demonstrate to people that you can do landscape maintenance work whether you're a commercial landscaping company, property owner, homeowner you can really do just about anything with electric equipment."

The garden plans to install solar panels on the roof of their horticulture barn to charge the new battery-powered equipment. The installation of solar panels is supported by a more than $100,000 Massachusetts Cultural Coalition Cultural Facilities Fund grant.