It’s harvest time in Kansas City, and everyone from hipster teenagers to middle-aged researchers to soccer moms is out plucking fruit from nearby orchards. The fruit is free for the picking, thanks to a local organization exploding across the country.
The Giving Grove was just a concept 14 years ago. Now, the organization and its legions of volunteers have planted more than 14,000 trees in 17 cities spanning much of the country, all producing fruit anyone can take. The organization measures annual production in the millions of pounds, and impact in the thousands of people who turn out to pick fruit, trim trees, or just hang out in their 847 orchards.
“I feel like a fairy tale princess every lunch because I get to go out and just feast on little treats,” said Nova Henry, a senior at Kansas City Academy at 80th and Main Streets.
“We can literally just eat them straight off the tree whenever we want during lunch,” ninth grader Alex Ledford chimed in. “That's awesome!”
The Giving Grove orchard at Kansas City Academy is small, just a few trees spread around the school’s asphalt parking lot. There are fig, pear and apple trees, too, but the students are picking jujubes, or Asian pears.
“That’s my personal favorite,” said Ledford. “The texture is kind of woody, but they’re really sweet. It’s my favorite like little yoink it and eat it snack.”
The trees aren’t just a snack bar. They attract insects, which attract songbirds, which attract predators like hawks. It’s a whole ecosystem. One student landed work at a tree nursery based on experience gleaned from pruning and caring for these trees.
“The Giving Grove is a wonderful partner for us,” said Janet Porter, a science teacher who takes care of the orchard at the school. “They do training. They do workshops. If I ever have any questions, they’re just a phone call away.”
About 1,700 other “orchard stewards” have the same relationship with the Giving Grove. It’s an organization built around sharing skills and resources, and that drives its high success rate. Across the country, more than four out of five Giving Grove orchards planted remain in production.
“It's stuff people can learn, but it takes a long time, and it's not really efficient for one group to do that,” said Kevin Birzer, a founder of the Giving Grove. “So our thought from day one was we would provide that expertise, the knowledge of how to grow the trees, how to select the trees.”
The Giving Grove grew out of a small stand of trees planted 13 years ago on the corner at Hale Cook Elementary, a public school in Waldo that the district had shuttered at the time. It’s still there, though currently behind a construction fence because the school has reopened and is expanding.
“So, this little orchard we’re standing in here started a national movement,” said Giving Grove Marketing Director Sarah Sikich. “I think it’s one of Kansas City’s best-kept secrets.”
Working with Kansas City Community Gardens, the Giving Grove planted orchards on unused plots of ground across the metro with anywhere from a few trees to over a hundred, depending on the available space and local interest. The idea took off, and now Kansas City has 248 free orchards, with almost 4,600 fruit, nut and berry trees.
“I joke that Kansas City should be the city of orchards, not the city of fountains,” Sikich said. “No other city in the United States has as many orchards as we do.”
Nine years ago, the group branched out. A community gardening group in St. Louis asked for help setting up orchards, so that was the first expansion city. Now the Giving Grove is in cities from Seattle to Atlanta, with talks to help plant orchards in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and New York City. The different ethnic groups that make up different cities’ populations want different kinds of trees. Providing that in wildly varying climatic zones without using chemical pesticides and herbicides can be tricky.
“Some environments are more challenging,” Birzer said. “Growing them in Brooklyn may be a lot different than growing them in Utah, no doubt…Creating something really cool for the neighborhood, that part’s universal.”
The Giving Grove uses a chunk of its budget, a little more than $1 million a year, to staff and supply new orchards before they can function mostly on their own. It helps local organizations find grant money, improve their soils, prune trees, and make succession plans for when volunteer orchard stewards burn out or move on.
Much of the money comes from 1% for the Planet, which pools corporate donations for environmental causes. Corporations give directly and sometimes provide volunteer labor. Individual donors make up the rest.
The Giving Grove only helps out when it’s invited into a community, and is currently juggling invitations.
“I think people have an easy time falling in love with what we’re doing,” said Sikich. “Planting fruit trees is something everyone can agree with.”
