A community orchard is a collection of fruit trees shared by communities and growing in publicly accessible areas such as public greenspaces, parks, schools, churchyards, allotments or, in the US, abandoned lots. Such orchards are a shared resource and not managed for personal or business profit. Income may be generated to sustain the orchard as a charity, community interest company, or other non-profit structure. What they have in common is that they are cared for by a community of people. [1]
Community orchards are planted for many reasons. They increase the public's access to healthy, organic fruit - especially in areas where the population cannot afford healthy, fresh food. They teach young people where their food comes from. They allow ordinary people to develop organic fruit tree growing skills. And they can make an ordinary park or green space into a community centre, where residents volunteer together to care for and harvest the trees. Community orchards also are a place of celebration. Many groups organize harvest and blossom festivals, cider pressing events, canning workshops and more. [2]
Community orchards are structured in various ways. Some models, such as Copley Orchard in Vancouver, have a membership model. Members are asked to donate $20 a year to cover orchard costs. Membership comes with rights and responsibilities. Members have the right to enjoy the harvest - and the responsibility to care for the trees during stewardship days. [3] [4]
Other orchards are linked to allotment gardens. Strathcona Community Orchard in Vancouver, B.C., is an example of that. Members pay for the right to grow vegetables or flowers in one of the 200 plots on the site - membership is just $10.00 a year and the plot rental fee is an additional $5 a year. As part of their membership, however, they must attend a certain number of mandatory work party days which take place on the last Sunday of every month except December. During the work parties, members spend time caring for the garden’s communal assets. Those assets include the fruit trees, the compost pile, and pathways.
Community orchards are often made up of newly planted trees, but in some cases local residents have joined forces to rescue an old, neglected orchard that might otherwise be cut down. One example of that is Piper Orchard in Seattle, WA. That orchard was planted by A.W. Piper, a Bavarian pioneer in the late 1800s. His family later sold the land to the city to become part of a large park. The fruit trees were forgotten until 1983, when a group of volunteers decided to clear the overgrowth around the trees, many of which were still alive and still producing.
Some groups are integrating permaculture concepts into their orchards by creating food forests that interplant various types of perennial food crops. The goal is to create an ecosystem that works in harmony with nature. In food forests, trees, shrubs, and herbs work together to prevent pest and disease problems and to increase soil fertility. One well publicized example is the Beacon Food Forest in Seattle. [5]
Municipalities are also responding to increasing demand for communal fruit trees by planting apple, pear, and other fruit trees in public spaces. The City of Calgary, for instance, launched their Community Orchard Pilot project in 2009. Some of the orchards are city run and others are community-run. Their goal was to encourage local food production, foster community involvement, educate Calgarians about fruit tree care techniques, to demonstrate and test a range of fruit trees and shrubs and to evaluate the success of community orchard models, share results and recommend changes if required.
Researchers are now studying the community orchard movement to see how it affects food security in cities and how it affects the environment. Kyle Clark and Kimberly A. Nicholas believe that urban food forestry, while in its infancy is not a passing trend. They believe community orchards and food forests will contribute to sustainable living in cities and help cities faced challenges like food security, climate change and poverty. [6]
One of the problems faced by the community orchard movement is that many groups are planting fruit trees without knowing the complexities of how to care for them organically. Poor decisions early on and a lack of fruit tree care skills can lead to long-lasting problems.
In an article "Community Orchards" by the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, author and NCAT Horticulture Specialist Guy K. Ames writes.
"The relative permanence of an orchard demands far-sightedness. An ill-chosen variety can cost years of time and care before it is discarded as impractical or chronic diseases exact their toll. Failure to properly amend a soil before planting is not easily rectified after a tree is established. And a pruning, fertilization, and training regimen needs to be well-considered at the start and somewhat consistent through the years, or the orchardists are risking aggravating diseases, inducing biennial bearing, delaying the age of fruiting, or otherwise creating long-lasting problems for themselves and the plants. [7]
Other problems include resistance in communities that do not welcome fruit trees in their local park. In Toronto, Canada, a proposal to plant a community orchard in a local park raised an uproar as some residents feared that the fruit trees would displace children playing ball. [8] [9]
The community orchard movement is relatively new in North America, but it has existed since the 1990s in the United Kingdom. [10] [1]
Today there are hundreds of community orchards in the UK. [11] In the capital, London, more orchards are fruit trees are being planted in public spaces - and some old orchards are being restored - by a group called the London Orchard Project. [12] [13]
There are also initiatives in other countries. Pick Your (City) Fruit is a project in Lisbon, [14] Portugal supported by the European Cultural Foundation. Their goal is to create public orchards that will be cared for by the community and will also be a place where all members of society can share "experiences, techniques, recipes and food".
In October 2020, Varazdin, Croatia built the first phase of community orchard with 250 trees accessible to the public. [15]
In 2015, a group of community orchardists from across North America joined forces. The leaders of the Baltimore Orchard Project, [16] Philadelphia Orchard Project, [17] Portland Fruit Tree Project, [18] and Orchard People in Toronto felt that many community orchardists were making the same mistakes and "reinventing the wheel". [19] Their goal was to create a network of community orchardists who could share resources and information for the purpose of "advancing the conduct, knowledge and impact of urban agroforestry.
The group, with the assistance and support of ACTrees [20] and the Arbour Day Foundation, [21] holds monthly free webinars covering topics of interest to community orchardists and has guest speakers including well known authors Michael Phillips, author of "The Holistic Orchard", Eric Toensmeier, author of Perennial Vegetables and co-author of "Edible Forest Gardens", and Lee Reich, author of Landscaping with Fruit. Within the first 6 months of its founding in January 2015, The Community Orchard Network had a membership of 185 people from North America and beyond in its google group. (Potential conflict of interest, my company Orchard People was involved in as a founder of this group.)
The Arbor Day Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization dedicated to planting trees. The Arbor Day Foundation has more than one million members and has planted more than 350 million trees in neighborhoods, communities, cities and forests throughout the world. The Foundation's stated mission is "to inspire people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees." The organization has a Charity Navigator rating of 3 out of 4 stars and is based in Nebraska.
Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, town planning, rewilding, and community resilience. Permaculture originally came from "permanent agriculture", but was later adjusted to mean "permanent culture", incorporating social aspects. The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who formulated the concept in opposition to modern industrialized methods instead adopting a more traditional or "natural" approach to agriculture.
Forest gardening is a low-maintenance, sustainable, plant-based food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. Making use of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow in a succession of layers to build a woodland habitat. Forest gardening is a prehistoric method of securing food in tropical areas. In the 1980s, Robert Hart coined the term "forest gardening" after adapting the principles and applying them to temperate climates.
An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees which are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive purpose. A fruit garden is generally synonymous with an orchard, although it is set on a smaller non-commercial scale and may emphasize berry shrubs in preference to fruit trees. Most temperate-zone orchards are laid out in a regular grid, with a grazed or mown grass or bare soil base that makes maintenance and fruit gathering easy.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to sustainable agriculture:
Beneficial insects are any of a number of species of insects that perform valued services like pollination and pest control. The concept of beneficial is subjective and only arises in light of desired outcomes from a human perspective. In agriculture, where the goal is to raise selected crops, insects that hinder the production process are classified as pests, while insects that assist production are considered beneficial. In horticulture and gardening, beneficial insects are often considered those that contribute to pest control and native habitat integration.
Urban agriculture,urban farming, or urban gardening is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around urban areas. It encompasses a complex and diverse mix of food production activities, including fisheries and forestry, in cities in both developed and developing countries. The term also applies to urban area activities of animal husbandry, aquaculture, beekeeping, and horticulture. These activities occur in peri-urban areas as well, although peri-urban agriculture may have different characteristics.
Urban forestry is the care and management of single trees and tree populations in urban settings for the purpose of improving the urban environment. Urban forestry involves both planning and management, including the programming of care and maintenance operations of the urban forest. Urban forestry advocates the role of trees as a critical part of the urban infrastructure. Urban foresters plant and maintain trees, support appropriate tree and forest preservation, conduct research and promote the many benefits trees provide. Urban forestry is practiced by municipal and commercial arborists, municipal and utility foresters, environmental policymakers, city planners, consultants, educators, researchers and community activists.
CERES Community Environment Park is a 4.5-hectare (11-acre) environmental education centre and social enterprise located in urban Brunswick East, Victoria, Australia. CERES stands for Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies. The name also connects with Ceres the goddess of agriculture in Roman mythology.
The Chicago Botanic Garden is a 385-acre (156 ha) living plant museum situated on nine islands in the Cook County Forest Preserves. It features 27 display gardens in four natural habitats: McDonald Woods, Dixon Prairie, Skokie River Corridor, and Lakes and Shores. The garden is open every day of the year. An admission fee has been approved to start in 2022, not to exceed $35.
Social forestry is the management and protection of forests and afforestation of barren and deforested lands with the purpose of helping environmental, social and rural development. The term social forestry was first used in 1976 by The National Commission on Agriculture, when the government of India aimed to reduce pressure on forests by planting trees on all unused and fallow lands. It was intended as a democratic approach to forest conservation and usage, maximizing land utilization for multiple purposes.
Monterey County reforestation refers to efforts in Monterey County, California to protect the county's pine forests and urban environment. The native Monterey Pine ecosystem is one of the rarest forest ecosystems in the world. Only a few thousand acres of the endemic trees exist in four locations along the Pacific Ocean on the Central Coast of California. The city of Monterey itself maintains more than 19,000 trees in parks and along streets, and about 300 acres (1.2 km2) of Monterey Pine forest.
Emma Prusch Farm Park is a 43.5 acre park in East San Jose, California. Donated by Emma Prusch to the City of San Jose in 1962 to use to demonstrate the valley's agricultural past, it includes a 4-H barn, community gardens, a rare-fruit orchard, demonstration gardens, picnic areas, and expanses of lawn. The park is host to an annual Harvest Festival and is operated cooperatively by the San Jose Parks and Recreation Department and the non-profit Emma Prusch Farm Park Foundation.
Fallen Fruit is a Los Angeles based artists' collaboration composed of David Allen Burns and Austin Young. The project was originally conceived by David Allen Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young in 2004. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work installing public artworks and participating in exhibitions worldwide. Using photography and video as well as performance and installation art, Fallen Fruit's work focuses on urban space, neighborhood, located citizenship and community and their relationship to the public realm.
Trees for the Future is a Maryland-based nonprofit organization founded on August 14, 1989, that trains farmers around the world in agroforestry and sustainable land use.
Community gardens in the United States benefit both gardeners and society at large. Community gardens provide fresh produce to gardeners and their friends and neighbors. They provide a place of connection to nature and to other people. In a wider sense, community gardens provide green space, a habitat for insects and animals, sites for gardening education, and beautification of the local area. Community gardens provide access to land to those who otherwise could not have a garden, such as apartment-dwellers, the elderly, and the homeless. Many gardens resemble European allotment gardens, with plots or boxes where individuals and families can grow vegetables and flowers, including a number which began as victory gardens during World War II. Other gardens are worked as community farms with no individual plots at all, similar to urban farms.
International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, also known as IIRR is a non-profit organization that helps empower rural communities by making them self-sufficient. By offering programs across health, education, environment and livelihood, its goal is to have rural communities take charge of their own success. The organization has delivered programs to more than 40 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America and directly impacted the lives of over 5 million people as of 2019.
Foodscaping is a modern term for the practice of integrating edible plants into ornamental landscapes. It is also referred to as edible landscaping and has been described as a crossbreed between landscaping and farming. As an ideology, foodscaping aims to show that edible plants are not only consumable but can also be appreciated for their aesthetic qualities. Foodscaping spaces are seen as multi-functional landscapes which are visually attractive and also provide edible returns. Foodscaping is a great way to provide fresh food in an affordable way.
Gateway Greening is non-profit organization based in St. Louis, Missouri that works to educate and empower the community through gardening and urban agriculture. The organization operates demonstration and community resource gardens and an urban farm, hosts lectures and education programs, and supports school and community gardens throughout the City and St Louis County, Missouri.
The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN) is an urban, community-oriented, predominantly black, grassroots food justice group. The organization was initiated by a communal desire to start an organic garden collective, and has grown from its founding in 2006 with over 50 Detroit residents as members. In an effort to combat food insecurity and increase food sovereignty, DBCFSN established a community accessible food farm in 2008, known as D-Town Farm, which grows over 30 types of fruits and vegetables on seven acres of land.