Open Orchard School: Heirloom Apples and Pears

The Open Orchard School is a series of vir­tu­al work­shops con­nect­ed to Sam Van Aken’s mon­u­men­tal project The Open Orchard on Gov­er­nors Island, a future pub­lic orchard con­tain­ing 100 trees and hun­dreds of rare and heir­loom vari­eties once grown in the NYC region, but which have dis­ap­peared due to cli­mate change and indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture. In this webi­nar, artist and orchardist Sam Van Aken will share the often lost or for­got­ten sto­ries of these rare fruits — sto­ries that are woven into the sto­ry of NYC itself. Learn about his decades-long project of col­lect­ing these vari­eties and graft­ing them onto liv­ing trees in order to pre­serve them, the process that will bring The Open Orchard to life. See past Open Orchard School work­shops here.

Facil­i­tat­ed by Sam Van Aken, The Open Orchard. Pho­to by Sam Van Aken.

The Open Orchard School work­shop series is a part­ner­ship between NYC Parks Green­Thumb and The Trust for Gov­er­nors Island to bring The Open Orchard to com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens around the city. The Open Orchard, a project by Sam Van Aken and pre­sent­ed by The Trust for Gov­er­nors Island, is a pub­lic art project to plant an orchard of 100 fruit trees, each con­tain­ing mul­ti­ple vari­eties of heir­loom peach­es, plums, apri­cots, cher­ries, and apples, on Gov­er­nors Island. Through the Open Orchard School, com­mu­ni­ty gar­den­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic will get hands-on, in-depth expe­ri­ence with fruit tree care, plant­i­ng, and graft­ing, to ensure the ongo­ing stew­ard­ship of the hun­dreds of fruit trees in com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens citywide.