In the late nineteenth century, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead proposed for Boston an “Emerald Necklace,” a series of parks and greenways linking around the city in a ring. Though the park system is celebrated today, it is not complete according to Olmstead’s original vision. Franklin Park and South Boston were to be connected by a linear parkway along Columbia Road – but this section was never built, despite periodically recurring interest over the centuries from the government, community, and private sector alike. Though we often conceive of nature as pure and at a remove from the quotidian, the story of this missing link illuminates the profound connections between nature and capital, so contentious and capricious that development proposals for Columbia Road are actively being debated today.