There is a lot of work behind the scenes in the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard where a handful of volunteers spend over 400 hours a year caring for the fruit trees and our pollinator garden.
The rewards are many…we spend time building community and we enjoy seeing the park look so beautiful. But one of the biggest treats is harvest time and right now the two large sweet cherry trees in the park are ripe and ready to be picked.
And so this weekend, Susan, Giselle, Zeny, Olivia and three of our teenage volunteers spent our Sunday morning working on renovating the pollinator garden. And after that we gathered at the cherry trees and started to harvest!
This was just the beginning. Tomorrow evening (Monday June 27 at 7pm EST), we are inviting the community to come and help us harvest the cherry trees. Bring a bag or a container and you will take lots of cherries home.
Also a reminder….we have lots of other fruit trees in the park with fruit that is not ripe yet. This is our harvest policy:
If you see ripe fruit on the park’s fruit trees, you are welcome to harvest a few handfuls to eat in the park. Please do not harvest fruit to take home unless you are attending one of our community harvest days. And please, please do not pick unripe fruit.
Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard Harvest Policy
If you want to be notified about future community harvest days, send an email to growingforgreen (at) gmail.com. Write COMMUNITY EVENTS in the title or your email.
And if you would like to become a park volunteer and help us care for the trees and garden, email us at the same address. Write VOLUNTEER in the title. Then we will send you our stewardship day schedule.
Hope to see many of you in the orchard tomorrow!
Susan Poizner is one of the volunteers for The Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard in Toronto. She is the creator of the fruit tree care education website OrchardPeople.com. Susan is the author of four fruit tree care books including Grow Fruit Trees Fast: A Beginner’s Guide to a Healthy Harvest in Record Time. She is also the host of the Orchard People podcast and an ISA Certified Arborist.