Philadelphia Orchard Project

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Philadelphia Orchard Project

Mission. The Philadelphia Orchard Project plants and supports community orchards in the city of Philadelphia.

POP partners with a wide variety of community groups, providing them with an orchard design, plant sourcing, planting supervision, and training in orchard care. Our community partners own, maintain, harvest, and distribute the orchard produce within their neighborhoods, thus expanding community control over their food resources. POP currently supports 67 community orchards and has planted 1,578 fruit trees over the last 15 years!

07/02/2025

POP Orchard Coordinator, Carolina (Caro) Torres, led a cooling herbs teach-in with POP staff at the Learning Orchard yesterday! Caro facilitated conversation around how our bodies operate during heat, helpful herbs for hydration and balance, lifestyle changes that can be made during hot summer months to ensure safety and prevent heat stroke (especially as people who work outside) and a live demo preparing a simple herbal clay that can be used on bug bites, scars or for generally cooling down!

What are your favorite herbs for keeping the body cool during these hot summer months? Comment below!

Image Descriptions:

1. Caro wearing a green gingham button up and a black hat and pants. They are standing behind a low wooden table that has a large ziploc bag halfway full of nettles. To the right of them is a large orange cooler, cups, cans of seltzer and lemonade.

2. A video of Caro pouring a dark green tea with nettles, marshmallow leaf and chocolate mint into a clear cup

3. Caro holding up plantain leaves
4. A video of Caro making an herbal bentonite clay mixture that can be used for bites, scratches, rashes or cooling down

5. Clay mixture in a glass jar held by Sharon
6. Clay mixture applied on Simone’s leg from some recent bug bites!
7. Because we are all fruit people, delicious, tart and refreshing passionfruit Caro brought from a fruit stand in Chinatown, NYC to share with POP staff

06/25/2025

Join us this summer for POP Learning Orchard Activations! POP Learning Orchard Activations aim to expand the use of the space at the POP headquarters site through movement and wellness classes and relationship building with the land.

POP is delighted to host Taiji in the Orchard facilitated by Caleb Arnold!

Caleb will be teaching an introductory Chen Taiji Class. This style of taiji focuses on alignment, structure, and building strength and power. It is a demanding yet meditative practice suitable for all fitness and strength levels.

Caleb has well over a decade of martial arts experience, and in 2016 began training Chen-style Taijiquan within the Chen Zhaokui/Chen Yu lineage. Their approach to practice is both dedicated and inquisitive, rooted in long-term personal exploration of martial arts and internal arts.

They teach a weekly beginners class at Everybody Moves in West Philly.

🗓️When: Wednesday, July 2, 2025
🌧️Rain Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2025
⏳Time: 5:30pm - 7:30pm
📍Where: POP Learning Orchard at The Woodlands Cemetery, 4000 Woodland Ave

Event is free but registration is required and
slots are limited!

Link in the bio for additional details and registration 🔗

06/24/2025

Now in its 6th summer, the POP Learning Orchard is bursting with abundant fruit, herbs, new plantings and some new orcharding techniques this season. Some recent highlights so far include:

Plantings

1). The beloved Raja Puri banana that was planted in the orchard last season was not able to make it through the winter. After meeting together, POP staff agreed that we made some missteps when it came to cutting the banana back and wrapping it securely enough to keep it from getting too wet. We decided to take one more shot at having a banana in the orchard this season with some wrapping adjustments (updates coming soon!)

2). Orchard Assistant Hannah Thompson took the lead with annual crop planning production and guided staff and volunteers through the process of planting and new annual production crop… potatoes! Here Hannah is “hilling” or adding additional soil to the potatoes to keep light away from developing tubers.

3). - 4). New grape vines planted on the nursery fenceline to maximize the additional space! Fern Munson and Mrs Munson, concord-like varieties were selected due to being highly disease resistant. Along with the grapes, several different beans were planted including the Purple Kingsessing Bean and Gita Long Beans!

Harvest

5). - 10). May through June was berry berry cherry? Abundant! POP staff, volunteers and lead orchard volunteers picked black, red and yellow raspberries, nanking cherries,strawberries, goumis upon goumis to take home and to distribution partners including Food Not Bombs West Philly and Get Fresh Daily.

IPM Strategies

11). Caro showing their bounty of cherries infected with brown rot. This season we did our best to up our orchard sanitation practices to reduce the ongoing spread of pests and diseases. While harvesting cherries, Caro was diligent about also removing cherries that had been hit with the notorious fungal disease.

(continued in comments…)

06/09/2025

Mulberry Magic is here! This abundant and underappreciated fruit is ripening across the city.

Did you know that mulberries are actually the sweetest of all fruit? They pop up everywhere in the city and the more we can pick and eat the fewer new w**d trees will result. There are both native and non-native mulberries, but most wild seedling trees in the city are natural hybrids of multiple species. Although all mulberries are sweet, they vary considerably in flavor! Try the trees in your neighborhood and see which one you like best!

1. A bowl showing both black and white colorations of ripe mulberries.

2. A group of POP volunteers harvests mulberries from a tall tree using the shake and tarp method.

3. Volunteers in a circle display their ‘mulberry hands’, stained purple by the juicy fruit.

Note: Gathering of fruits, flowers, and other plant parts at The Woodlands is not encouraged outside of educational POP events.

06/03/2025

We had a beautiful Linden flower harvest last week!
Linden (tilia ssp) also known as basswood, lime tree, tilo, and other names, is a gorgeous tree in the mallow family with fragrant flowers currently in bloom all over the city.

You may have recognized it by its funny light green tongues, which are part of the flower. They have dark green heart-shaped leaves and can grow very tall.

This year, we are leaning into harvesting aromatic tree flowers as part of POP Harvest. These flowers and petals can be dried and used in a tea blend or on its own. They have many medicinal uses but are most known for their relaxing properties and sweet smell. Like with any herb or new plant, always check in with a medical professional before consuming, specially if you take medications. And always harvest from places with low traffic and potential for contamination.

We have two POP Harvest events this week:
🫐 Tomorrow at for Juneberries 4:00pm
🫐 Thursday for Mulberries

Sign up and stay tuned for more POP Harvest events by checking out our website!

Photos:
Our Linden flower harvest in a basket
Hand reaching flower
Caro with the tall tree
Whole linden flower

05/29/2025

Join us to welcome the Summer with our annual Strawberry Fest in partnership with ! Visit us at the POP Learning Orchard and volunteer to support some of our partners around the city.

🔗 Visit the EVENTS link in our bio to sign up. Don't forget to subscribe to our Volunteer mailing list to get email notifications.

🍓 STRAWBERRY FEST
Saturday, Jun 7, 1 pm - 3 pm
Strawberry Mansion, 2450 Strawberry Mansion Dr

Join us for a day of fun to celebrate strawberries at Historic Strawberry Mansion in East Fairmount Park! Pick and enjoy strawberries and other seasonal fruits, enjoy strawberry desserts and refreshments as well as food from . Learn about birds of prey with and bees and pollinators with the .

🌳 OPEN ORCHARD
Saturday, May 31, 12 pm - 3 pm
AND Saturday, Jun 28, 12 pm - 3 pm
POP Learning Orchard, 4000 Woodland Ave

Come out to the Woodlands to explore the POP Learning Orchard! See what’s growing, take a self-guided tour, and try our Tree Finder Map to learn more about the specific tree varieties. An orchard tour will be offered at 1:30pm.

(Image description: POP partners and volunteers learning about Pest & Disease Management at Share Food's Nice Roots Farm.)

05/22/2025

You’ve probably noticed the distorted leaves on your peach trees by now! Check our linktree in bio for our new blog post about this common and easy to identify disease. We also have a new POP Peach Leaf Curl Action Plan for what to do about it. You’ll find a link to all our pest and disease action plans in the linktree!

Peach leaf curl (Taphrina deformans) is a highly common fungal disease that affects peaches and nectarines.

Signs and Symptoms: Peach leaf curl causes leaves to thicken, pucker, and curl turning from reddish to yellow to gray and then falling off. It can sometimes cause disfigurement and drop of fruit, but this is less common. Once spotted in spring, it is too late to treat the fungus until the dormant season.

What’s going on with an infected tree: The tree is in a weakened, under-resourced state. The fungus is disrupting the tree’s ability to photosynthesize so it has less resources than normal. Additionally, the fungus often causes the tree to drop infected leaves, and grows new ones requiring more than normal resources. If the tree continues to be significantly under-resourced for several years in a row, it could weaken and die.

What you can do to support an infected tree in the spring:

Infected trees often drop infected leaves and regrow new ones causing a need for plenty of nitrogen. Spreading compost or applying fish emulsion can help. Apply holistic sprays such as compost tea, Effective Microbes, and/or neem oil to boost tree immunity every two weeks from late March to early May.

When fruitlets on stone fruit such as peaches are about 3/4 inch, thin fruitlets to increase light and air circulation and reduce rate of infection from fruits too closely touching. Peaches should be thinned about 8″ apart (if you have squirrels, thin to 4″). Infected trees are weakened and their fruit load should be thinned in correlation to the severity of the infection to protect the trees resources.

Don’t allow tree to become water stressed. If rain accumulation is less than 1”/week supplement with irrigation.

Most importantly, plan for a dormant season spray the following year to reduce next year’s infection! See linktree for more info.

05/17/2025

POP’s spring plant sale is on!

Here at The Woodlands from 10 to 1. Orchard Tour at 11am!

1. Welcome table!
2. Landhealth Institute selling native perennials.
3. Star Apple Nursery selling veggie transplants.
4. Bee Guild with honey.
5 & 6. POP selling figs, berries, rhubarb and more!

05/13/2025

Join us for POP’s spring plant sale, taking place at the POP Learning Orchard at the Woodlands on Saturday May 17 from 10am-1pm (raindate: Sunday 5/18). Plants available for sale by POP will include a range of fruiting trees, berries, vines, and some perennial flowers and herbs. DROP-INS ARE WELCOME, PRE-REGISTRATION IS NOT REQUIRED!

Also featuring:

Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild – info table & honey

Star Apple Nursery – vending herb & veggie starts

LandHealth Institute – vending native perennial flowers and herbs

Stroll through the Learning Orchard, explore the nearly 100 trees, connect with us and the community, and peruse our edible and useful plant sale. This is a free event but donations to support POP’s ongoing programs are appreciated.

Event Schedule:

10am – 1pm : Plant Sale

11am: Orchard Tour

12pm-1:30pm: SWWAG Garden Trellis Workshop (please pre-register via Philly orchards.org/events)

Photo 1: People gathered in POP Learning Orchard looking at potted plants for sale.

Photo 2: List of POP plants for sale including figs, blueberries, currants, rhubarb and more.

05/01/2025

This spring POP provided 50 fig trees of favorite varieties from our nursery to TreePhilly for distribution at their Yard Tree Giveaway events! We’ll also be providing them 50 pawpaws for their fall distribution, as well as another 10 trees to participants in Sankofa Farm’s yard bed program for Southwest Philly. Lovely to think of so many yards in Philadelphia being filled with POP-grown trees that will provide food, shade, and ecological benefits for decades to come!

We are grateful for support from the William Penn Foundation to make these tree distributions possible.

1. Photo of POP and Tree Philly staff holding potted fig trees in front of a fully loaded truck.
2. Photo of 50 potted POP fig trees.
3. Photo of Sankofa Farm at Bartram’s Garden truck, with trees from POP’s nursery.

04/23/2025

In recognition of Earth Day, we are sharing some photos from last weekend’s planting of a new orchard at Penn Treaty Park in Fishtown! This collaborative planting was in partnership with Friends of and one of dozens of community orchards on property.

This site was designed by POP orchard coordinators Simone Shemshedini and Carolina Torres, under the guidance and mentorship of co-executive director Phil Forsyth. As with every POP community orchard, the design is a collaborative process with the partner, in this case the Friends of Penn Treaty. Harvests from this location, once the trees and bushes start to produce fruit, will be distributed via a partnership with

The orchard plantings add to the existing tree canopy, and will provide fruit for community members in need, and educational opportunities tied to the unique cultural history of the landscape. The “gateway garden” will enhance the area around the existing Bob Haozous statue with flowers and pollinator plants, helping to welcome visitors and passersby to the park: stay tuned for a fall planting when the pollinator garden will be installed!

All proposed plantings are native plants, selected for their ease of maintenance and their connection to the indigenous and colonial history of the site. The trees and shrubs planted last weekend include paw paw, juneberry, American hazelnut, beach plum, American persimmon, redbud, cranberry, elderberry, and spicebush.

The gateway garden and orchard are envisioned as an educational space, with opportunities to connect to other Penn Treaty Park programming, including Indigenous People’s Day celebrations and the Penn Treaty Museum.

Continued in comments

04/10/2025

“Dandelions are an ever-present feature of the urban landscape here in Philadelphia, growing in abandoned lots, through cracks in the concrete, and on the edges of sidewalks and yards. As a child growing up in Brooklyn, NY, dandelions were some of my first and closest plant companions. I loved scattering the seed heads after making a wish, tying the stems together to create flower crowns and necklaces, pointing out their bright yellow blooms on my way home from the library. I didn’t think deeply about them—they were simply a part of the everyday ecology that surrounded me…”

Last spring Bitter Kalli (._ ), led our Lead Orchard Volunteers through a writing workshop on ‘Survival Lessons from the Dandelion’ and shared some reflections about their relationship with this resilient plant with us. Read more on “Tooth of the Lion: A Perennial Plant” on our blog!

Link in bio💛🌬️

Address

4000 Woodland Avenue
Philadelphia, PA
19104

Telephone

+12157241247

Website

https://linktr.ee/PhillyOrchards

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Plant the Future with POP!

POP partners with a wide variety of community groups, providing them with an orchard design, plant sourcing, planting supervision, and training in orchard care. Our community partners own, maintain, harvest, and distribute the orchard produce within their neighborhoods, thus expanding community control of food resources. POP currently supports 62 community orchards in neighborhoods across the city and has planted 1,258 fruit trees over the last 11 years!