Toronto’s very first community orchard was planted on June 4, 2009. A crew of gardeners from Parks, Forestry and Recreation planted nine beautiful fruit trees, including 3 pear trees, 3 plums trees and 3 sweet cherries, in Ben Nobleman Park today.  This comes after almost a year of applications, community meetings, and planning by a group of volunteers from Ward 21.

Until the park’s irrigation system is re-activated, the volunteers will water the trees by hand, meeting on Saturday mornings from 9.30am to 10.00 am and on Wednesdays, from 6.00pm to 6.30pm. If you’d like to join us, bring an empty bucket or two and meet us in the park.  We’ll collect water from a volunteer’s house across the road  to water the young trees. 

After the planting, we discovered that the Ben Nobleman Park Orchard Project was awarded a Walmart-Evergreen grant that will cover the cost to upgrade the parks irrigation system. Thank you Walmart-Evergreen for making a special day even better.