The fully mature Gough Park Orchard reports a banner harvest this year.Wednesday, July 1, 2020; Silver City, NM: After four years, Silver Citians are tasting the fruits of their labors as the Gough Park Orchard comes into full fruition. The public orchard is reporting a bumper crop of plums and looking forward to a fruitful future as more varieties ripen on the trees.

“It takes three years for an orchard to start producing sizable crops,” Kendra Milligan said, coordinator of the Grant County Neighborhood Orchards which supported the Gough Park Orchard creation with a variety of partners including the Town of Silver City which donated the land for the orchard, located near Gough Park - adjacent to the corner of Main and 11th Streets.

Gough Park Orchards had a bumper crop of plums last week. Residents can look forward to peaches, which are expected to ripen by mid-July.“This year the trees are laden with ripening fruit,” Milligan added. The orchard includes over 16 fruit trees with apples, cherries, peaches and is crowned with a single plum tree, whose branches were bowing with ripened fruit last week before the community came to lighten the tree’s burden while filling their stomachs.

“The plums are sweet, and it doesn’t get better [in life] than picking fruit from a tree you planted,” Manny Martinez said, who with his spouse Julie Good, helped plant the orchard on Earth Day in 2016, then known as the Office of Sustainability Orchard. The office has since closed, but the orchard it founded remains.

The couple share a vision of homesteading and self-sufficiency, so planting an orchard was “the bee’s knees for us,” according to Martinez.

“Last year we saw the plums and no one was picking them. We grabbed a few bowls full to make a couple of batches of plum jam which my mom had taught me how to make,” Martinez said. “We picked some this year too for more jam, because it turned out so well!”

“I don’t know if you can beat how sweet last year’s plums were,” Mayor Ken Ladner said of the ripening crops at the Gough Park Orchard. “They were so good I had no control. I wanted to eat too many, but you have to leave enough for everybody.”

Mayor Lander was one of the volunteers who pitched in to plant the orchard, and drops by yearly to sample the plum crop. This year he’s eyeing the still green peaches, which should be ready for picking between mid-July to late August.

The orchard was designed to offer fruit throughout the year from early summer cherries to late autumn apples to winter native grass seeds, donated by botanist Richard Felger, which can be ground into flour.

“The native plants and fruit trees add so much to the overall ambience of the city. I saw families there picking and eating plums together!” Mayor Lander added, “The orchard is a great example of water harvesting.”

The orchard was designed and installed by Stream Dynamics with Asher Gelbart, owner of Green Energy Now. The orchard collects over 35,000 gallons of water run-off from the street thanks to several curb cuts which run into catchment basins.

“With the help of the water harvesting basins, the orchard recreates the ecology of the original San Vicente de la Cienega in one small place,” observed Van Clothier, owner of Stream Dynamics.  

“We received a grant from the New Mexico Environmental Department to build 80 water harvesting basins, and the orchard was the biggest basin that the grant created,” said Clothier. “I hope that its success will inspire people to do more water harvesting projects.”

The Neighborhood Orchards project was inspired by Marcus Woodard, a local anti-hunger activist, who created a public fruit and edible map of downtown Silver City. Grant County Healthy Kids Healthy Communities staff Ali Jensen and Milligan expanded the mapping project to the entirety of town then used the resulting map to leverage grants to plant more publicly accessible fruit trees.

The project has planted over 18 orchards, comprising of 200 trees, on public land throughout the county including the 6th Street School Orchard, the Santa Clara’s Central Park Orchard, the Hurley Elementary School Orchard, and expanded the San Lorenzo Elementary School Orchard.  

“We prioritized schools because they are the heart of most neighborhoods, and we keep the trees low to the ground so children can easily reach the fruit,” said Milligan.

Most recently the Aldo Leopold Charter School’s Youth Conservation Corps maintains the orchard under the direction of supervisor Tricia Hurley. Their garden crew has adopted the orchard as their long-term project and enhanced the area by adding more plants and trees.

“We’ve had over 275 volunteers’ plant and tend the orchards, contributing over 3,000 hours to make public food more accessible in our county,” Milligan said. “So, when you pick a fruit to eat, please think of the volunteers that have made it possible.”

Adding fruit trees to the Silver City landscape was one of the recommendations from the Town’s “Community Forestry Plan” published in 2013, according to Denise Smith, previous director of the Office of Sustainability.

The office prioritized locating land for the orchards. “The area was nothing but dirt and weeds, but it was the right size and location, and had the potential for stormwater harvesting,” Smith said.

“The orchard has been bearing fruit since that first summer, but now it's coming into full maturity,” Smith observes.

The community is urged to pick fruit as it ripens, only please remain respectful of the amount you harvest.

Martinez shared his philosophy for harvesting, “If I see the fruit isn’t being picked, I take some and do what I can with it because I want other people to enjoy it too, not just myself”

For more information contact Milligan at kendraclone@gmail or visit: www.facebook.com/neighborhoodorchard.