Fruit Stewardship; A new grant-funded project
City Fruit was awarded a grant from the Department of Natural Resources in cooperation with the US Forest Service to develop a community stewardship program to care for fruit trees on community-owned properties, such as parks, community gardens and schools.
Fruit trees on public land
There are a ton of fruit trees on public property – more than 30 Seattle parks have fruit trees. Parks like Carkeek, Othello, and Martha Washington have extensive orchards with good specimens. Many other parks, such as the Linden Orchard P-Patch and Bradner Gardens, have planted mini-orchards as part of other edible landscaping projects.
While these trees are of value to the community, their maintenance and care are often more labor-intensive than non-edible trees. Civic landscaping budgets typically cannot cover the costs of the pruning, managing pests, and harvesting fruit. City Fruit is working with the Seattle’s Parks Department and Office of Sustainability to identify how to nurture these trees, harvest and use the fruit, and not negatively impact the bottom line. This project will attempt to create a model for public orchards everywhere.
Three main objectives:
- Create a curriculum and pilot a fruit tree care training program for lay gardeners
- Develop a sustainable, volunteer-based model to care for public fruit trees
- Recruit and train 12 – 15 volunteers in fruit tree management, using them to evaluate the training curriculum and the stewardship model
Modeled after success
City Fruit is using the successful, volunteer-based Seattle Forest Steward program (a project of the Green Seattle Partnership) as a blueprint. Fruit Tree Stewards will be responsible for year-round pruning, fruit thinning, recruiting volunteers to harvest fruit, picking up dropped fruit, summer watering, and basic pest management. The goal is to place at least two stewards per park, with each making a two-year commitment to their orchard. In the future, stewards can be rotated so that experienced Fruit Tree Stewards are paired with new volunteers.
Stewardship Project goals
By the end of this project, volunteers will ‘adopt’ the fruit trees in 4 – 5 public parks. Through collaboration between public agencies, private nonprofit organizations, and the volunteers themselves, the project will create a mechanism through which a fruit tree stewardship program can be sustained over the long-term. Such a model could easily be adapted by other communities interested in preserving this resource but lacking public funds.
Learn more
To learn more or ask questions about the Fruit Stewards project, e-mail us at stewards@cityfruit.org
