Amazingly, ten years have passed since we established our community orchard in Toronto, Canada. As the first community orchard in a public park in our city, it was a big deal. And we’ve had lots of adventures over the years. We have had harvest festivals and community events. We had an ice storm. We’ve had beautiful harvests. And we’ve had lots of fun.

So this year was a perfect year to celebrate our tenth anniversary and we did so this weekend during our annual spring fundraising event. Despite a rainy start, the skies were clear when we launched the event at 10 am and it was a beautiful day for a bake sale, an orchard tour, for unveiling a new mural and orchard signage, and for all of us to get to know our neighbours over coffee donated by our local Starbucks!

It’s been exactly ten years since the volunteers of the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard planted their first fruit trees. Back in 2009, this was a pilot project. We were planting the first community orchard in a public park in Toronto. And if our project was a success, other communities would be able to follow suit by planting fruit trees in their local parks. Our trees have grown and blossomed and our orchard is thriving…but amazingly, it’s taken us 10 years to create signage for the orchard! This past weekend, we finally unveiled new educational signage for our orchard and we’re so pleased!

Discover Your Local Orchard

It’s hard to believe, but it was exactly 10 years ago that volunteers in our neighbourhood received permission to plant our city’s first community orchard in a public park. We worked with our then city councillor, Joe Mihevc, and Parks, Forestry and Recreation Supervisor Chris Martin. And in June 2009, we planted our very first fruit trees.

Ten years later we have mature trees that are producing a wonderful organic harvest of cherries, apples, Asian pears, apricots and serviceberries. It’s been a lot of work – and a lot of fun! During the growing season volunteers meet 2-4 times a month to care for the trees (watering, mulching, pest and disease prevention) and to maintain our huge and lovely pollinator garden and we’d love to show you what we’ve done!