OUR HISTORY
This environmental endeavor began as a group of Honors College students at East Carolina University. Our passion for the environment brought us together to make an impact in our community. Our ultimate short term goal is to create an orchard to bear fruit for the community. This orchard will not be the only fruit of our labor, we will also be planting trees to serve as satellite orchards around the East Carolina campus and Greenville community to create engagement and involvement from the Greenville population. We want to promote an ecocentric worldview and spread our love of the environment.
Our hope is to inspire people within our community to engage with nature more often within their lives. We want to spark joy within people when they are learning about gardening, and connecting with others within our orchards. We truly believe that getting out and being in nature solves many of our everyday struggles and that hopefully the world will begin to remember how important nature should be to everyone
OUR PLAN
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This is Stratford Arms, which is located next to the Belk building on ECU's campus. With students being able to reach the site by utilizing ECU's transit system, this is the perfect location for our orchard, which we look forward to planting the spring (2021)!
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With the help of several individuals, we were able to come up with this finalized plan for our orchard. The orchard will contain pears, apples, persimmonns, blueberries, grapes, and a small pollinator garden, as well as a small herb garden. There is something for everyone in our orchard, and we hope that ECU students as well as the community will be able to benefit from our efforts!
ORCHARD PLANTING
On April 24, 2021 we had volunteers from ECU and the Greenville community come out to help plant the orchard. We were so grateful for the support and excited to see the orchard come to life on the Stratford Arms site. See below some pictures from the event and stay tuned for more event hosted by the Edible Landscape Initiative.
CURRENT OPERATIONS
We currently host volunteers within the orchard and focus on experiential education of students and the community. We teach individuals what it takes to maintain the orchard and about the different plants located within the orchard.
In the future we hope to continue to grow our initiative and better impact East Carolina University and the greater Greenville community.