Tucked away off this trail at Carkeek Park sits a little-known secret with a big history, called Piper's Orchard.
“The Piper's Orchard was actually planted... in 1890 by a private homeowner,” Carrie Ferrence, executive director of the nonprofit City Fruit, explained.
It boasts 50 trees with 30 varieties of fruits and nuts. Most of them are different types of apples.
It is just one of the public orchards City Fruit oversees.
The organization also works with private property owners to make sure the fruit you see growing throughout the city doesn't go to waste.
“We work to bring that fruit back into the open and make sure it’s put to its best use,” Ferrence said.
According to Ferrence, Seattle has one of the largest urban canopies of fruit trees in the country. Many of them are hidden in people's backyards.
“So we collect the fruit and divert it to food banks, community partners, senior centers, youth centers all year-round,” Ferrence added.
At Piper Orchard, you can see there are a lot of apples that have fallen to the ground not because they’re ripe, but because the pests have gotten to them.
“We spend a lot of time in the spring netting the trees to protect them from coddling moths and apple maggots,” Ferrence said.
Some of the other fruit is covered individually with a bag or a stocking.
It’s just one aspect of the work volunteers do year-round in addition to the much-needed job of harvesting.
“I think it's a good idea for [the] community, especially for children to come over and they can learn how apple grows,” said Glenda Larsen, who lives in Seattle and just happened to be admiring Piper’s Orchard.
“It's about protecting a resource that’s readily available and has been in [the] community for decades or even more than a century,” Ferrence added.
For more information on how owners can register their trees, click on this link.
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