Coming Soon: The Orchard Project
It’s been a pleasure to watch these outlines begin to take shape, hinting at the liveliness to come.
This autumn, you may have noticed our students hard at work along the Pine Street Lawn in front of the school, busy with bulb planters, bamboo markers, and cans of marking paint. These efforts are the first stages of the Classical Roots Program’s latest project: The Orchard.
The concept is to create a mature fruit orchard with paths and outdoor classroom spaces mowed into the long, grassy meadow underneath, underplanted with thousands of daffodils, tulips, and native New England wildflowers:
In addition to the rambling feel of the mowed-in paths pictured above, we will include circular areas with stump or bench seating where our Grammar School classes can meet, eat lunch, or simply rest in the sun:
Our goal is to welcome biodiversity and increase the positive impact of our campus on the local environment, while also creating a useful and productive space to be enjoyed by the Grammar School. Within a decade or so, we will also be able to harvest fruit.
To that end, we have used six-foot bamboo stakes to mark the future planting locations of the orchard trees, which will include thirty or so specimens of pears, damsons, and cherries, stretching in clean rows across the lawn. Amidst those rows, we have used smaller bamboo markers and hemp twine to plan the layout of the outdoor classrooms, and the meandering paths that will link them:
It’s been a pleasure to watch these outlines begin to take shape, hinting at the liveliness to come. Since the orchard trees will be best planted in spring, our main task in the autumn has been using bulb planters and lots of sweat to wild-plant nearly 10,000 tulip and daffodil bulbs into the lawn. To do this, we’ve simply tossed the bulbs onto the grass and planted them where they landed. The effect will be a pleasant contrast between the clean rows of the fruit trees and the irregular sprinkling of flowers blossoming between them.
It’s not an easy task, but we will all be rewarded in April and May with a wave of color. Alongside the wildflowers that we will also sew this fall, these bulbs will help to provide us with three seasons of color to enjoy while the young fruit trees mature.
