What a winter this has been! 2025 will mark the first year since we began in 2017 that more than 10 orchards will be producing fruit!

There is a saying in perennial agriculture - Sleep, Creep, Leap, and Reap. Each of our orchards have experienced their own phase of this, as has the Common Orchard Project on the whole. First came the sleepy little sticks that went into the ground in 2020-21, to the slow-creeping phase of spreading-out limbs, to the leaping phase of growth to catch the sun and turn it into delicious fruit, to reaping the harvest. Now, we are so excited and hopeful that this is a bountiful year. As each of these orchards have their own harvest, we are also growing more orchards using the plants in more mature orchards. Thus one orchard's reap becomes a new orchard's sleep, helping us to continue the cycle.

If I had to name it, I most feel in store for a Leap forward this year. We’re hitting our stride in planting orchards and really digging in on training orchard stewards, making sure they have everything they need to grow healthy and abundant trees.

Look up at the sky, get out in the sun,

Chris Smyth

Common Orchard Project Director

After years of intense orchard installations, we are taking a slower pace this year with three orchards on the docket. If you would like help in planting your community's orchard, we will return to a larger installation schedule in 2026.

If you would like to volunteer at Camp Washington Perennial Farm, we will have a number of regular volunteer times throughout the growing season, so please check out our volunteer form to hear more updates as things warm up!

We have 10 orchards at Cincinnati Public Schools and all of them could use additional volunteer help. Some trees are quite young and only need water a few times a year; others are getting older and will likely produce fruit in 2026.

If you are interested in learning more about becoming an orchard steward, please contact chris@greenumbrella.org or check out the orchard map on our website to see if a there is an orchard near you.

We have TWO paid workshops as we close out winter and get into the spring. First: Fruit Tree Pruning & Care on March 1 at Camp Washington Urban Farm. This is a core skill if you want to care for fruit trees in your backyard and aren’t able to commit to the volunteer work of being a steward.

We will also offer a Fruit Tree Grafting & Propagation class on March 22, teaching you how to cultivate your own fruit trees by learning this ancient practice. If you have a favorite variety you can’t find for sale, or have a beloved tree that you want to clone before it is no more, this is a great opportunity!

We wanted to start to profile what kind of fruit makes a great addition to the backyard or the community orchard, and what better tree to start with than North America's Largest Native Fruit, the pawpaw.

Pawpaw are incredibly tasty, with a very short ripening window, in the 3-5 day range. They are very disease/pest resistant and great for beginners. We plant two in most of the community orchards, because you need two to cross pollinate. We plant seedling trees and then graft named cultivars on top of them.

Uncultivated varieties can have off flavors and be smaller so we always recommend getting named cultivars. We love Mango, Prolific, Overlease, and many varieties from Kentucky State and pawpaw breeder, Neal Peterson.

They grow well in full sun! Don’t believe the hype that these are shade trees, they do like it in the shade, but if your goal is fruit, put them in as much sun as they can get.

Visit the Common Orchard Project website, reply to this email, or contact Common Orchard Project Director Chris Smyth at chris@greenumbrella.org