Elizabeth James Perry (Aquinnah Wampanoag), Firefly Garden, 2026
Tufts Pollinator Initiative
574 Boston Ave, Medford, MA
Note: This is an evolving project that is in the process of adapting to the site. For this reason, plants may be added or removed to further realize the artist's vision.
Artist statement:
Fireflies, also termed Lightning Bugs, are called wohsupahtawahs for “quickly flashes insect” in the artist's Wampanoag language. It is a type of slender beetle that uses luciferin in the abdomen to emit bioluminescent flashes of yellow, green or orange in order to attract mates from June through August. This Firefly Garden is intended to be educational, inviting, and providing shelter, shade and moisture with different Native leaf types and heights that can support fireflies in the summer, as they communicate in their distinctive nocturnal flashing sequences. There are twenty species of fireflies in Massachusetts. The green and cream raised garden bed was designed to reflect dappled light typical under edge-of-forests and clearings with high grass. Here pre-existing oak trees and evergreen shrubs, along with a few nearby cedars, create areas of deeper shade that make it possible for fireflies to find each other dusk into night, even in this urban setting. Plants help to hold moisture on hot summer months. Then their leaves dry in autumn, returning to earth and enriching the soil. Leaf litter provides shelter for the eggs, and the larval stage of fireflies spend two to three years in the ground, eating slugs and other soft-bodied insects, occasionally wild berries. Eggs and larval stages often glow faintly and most, but not all, adult beetles do. Originally, Walnut Hill would have had large tracts of forest, meadows maintained for Native planting fields, community spaces and ballfields and nearby wetlands in the form of springs for drinking water, natural marshes and wild cranberry bogs just inland of coastal grassy plains.
Watching fireflies flash on warm summer nights is enchanting. Hopefully in the near future fireflies will find this small habitat pleasant and useful, and decide to make it their home. Spending time on location was rewarding and it was an important opportunity to reconnect with Walnut Hill, a location of the large historic tribal community Mystick. I would like to thank the Indigenous Students' Organization at Tufts (ISOT) who volunteered their time on the garden.
Elizabeth James-Perry
Genera to look for include Photuris, Pyractomena, Photinus, Ellychnia, Lucidota.
For more information on fireflies read Silent Sparks,The Wonderous World of Fireflies by Sara Lewis, and visit the Firefly Atlas website.
The plants planted at the Firefly Garden in May 2026 are:
Beach plums Prunus maritima
Blueberry Vaccinium sp.
Spikenard Aralia racemosa
Aster Eurybia divaricate
Variegated Solomons Seal Polygonatum sp.
Hog peanuts NOTE: Mouse’s Ears is a better name Amphicarpa bracteata
Bee balm
Fiddlehead fern
