Drunk on Brooklyn Apples

Re-planting the City's orchards

In a recent essay we traced the walk of two Dutchmen visiting Manhattan and Brooklyn in 1679. What they were most impressed with was the absolute abundance of its fruiting trees, particularly apple and peaches. They reported some trees’ branches cracking under the weight of the fruit as they made their way through the Brooklyn villages.

A rare Brooklyn apple tree

Brooklyn’s Apple Trees, Today

The walker today, recreating something of this journey from Brooklyn Ferry Landing (near the Brooklyn Bridge) to Gowanus Bay would (according to the very helpful Tree Map of NYC) no longer encounters a single peach tree. There isn’t even one left in the whole of the city. The walker would encounter a handful of apple trees, it is true, but mostly crab apples. Perhaps, we shouldn’t expect much in our (now) dense urban environment. Yet, Brooklyn is relatively well forested. Consider the City has mapped 231,000 trees in Brooklyn alone. These only account for the street-facing and park trees. There is easily that number again in the closed courtyards of our residential blocks in Brooklyn.

Re-planting the City’s Orchards

Of the 880,000 trees mapped in the whole of the city, about 10,000 are apple trees of some sort. If New York’s various food and agricultural offices are serious about “urban agriculture”, why not begin with grafting edible apple trees to the extant apple trees? This could (after a few years to mature and fruit) give the city something like a 250-acre apple orchard. The pruning in care would require little additional effort (after grafting) for the city’s foresters. Volunteers would harvest the fruit in the fall.

Similarly we could graft fruiting pear root stock to the 65,000 pear trees, and fruiting cherry tree root stock to the 8,000 ornamental cherry trees, plum stock to the 9,000 purple leaf plums and so on. Efficient and enthusiastic volunteers and school children can help make sure all the fruit is harvested and used. Simultaneously, the city can encourage private gardens to plant fruiting trees.

Reverie, reality

It is the type of fantasy that can become reality in a few short years. Imagine, each fall a cider mill erected for a Harvest Fest at the Old Stone House park as apples were carried in from around the Borough…. a plum brandy distillery in Gowanus… a new orchard future…. It could be ours.