Some of the renovation work along Jamaica Pond's north shore is simply radishing

A Boston Parks and Recreation project around Jamaica Pond that has focused mainly on replacing the crumbling asphalt walkways that ring the park also includes work to improve the plantings there. Along the Parkman Drive and Perkins Street sides, workers have uprooted decades of weeds and put down new soil and, in several areas, grass seed.

But some fenced-off areas along Perkins Street will also get a special kind of radish: Oilseed radishes that put down large taproots that can reach down more than six feet.

The radishes - also known as drilling, tillage and turbo radishes - grow large in the spring and summer, then die off in the winter, leaving behind channels and pores into which rainwater and air can flow, to help more permanent plants take root and survive in dirt that had been compacted down by long periods of neglect - and people walking on it on their way to and from their cars parked along Perkins.