After a La Jolla parent wrote a grant six years ago, 180 fruit trees are dispersed into the ground to revive garden spaces at local elementary schools.
A sweet effort by a La Jolla parent has come to fruition, with about 180 fruit trees planted May 24 at La Jolla and Pacific Beach elementary schools.
The planting day was “magical,” said Jennifer Giaconi, who wrote a grant six years ago to the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, which aims to grow fruitful communities through gifted trees and onsite environmental curriculum.
The morning began at Pacific Beach Elementary School, where Giaconi’s oldest child attended kindergarten when she wrote the grant.
By the time Giaconi, also a certified master gardener, heard from FTPF in August that her grant was awarded, her oldest child was at Muirlands Middle School and Giaconi’s younger child had entered La Jolla Elementary School.
The grant – originally written for 40 fruit trees to revive the PBES garden space at the time – ended up being a delivery of about 180 fruit trees, as FTPF looks to keep its carbon footprint low, Giaconi said.
“They wanted to deliver as many fruit trees as possible, so they had us look around for satellite orchards,” she said, which led to LJES’s connection with this program.
After 50 trees went into the ground at PBES May 24, the FTPF team moved to LJES, where more than 30 volunteers including parents, teachers, students and other community members worked to put about 26 trees in the ground.
Each site also received lessons in planting fruit trees from FTPF expert arborist Erik Wilson, who used the “Dave Wilson method” to plant three trees in the same hole, which maximizes fruit yield and allows trees to be planted more densely, Giaconi said.
The fruit trees planted included a variety of locally-adapted trees such as plum, peach, blood orange, apricot and apple.
The extra fruit trees went to volunteers at each site for planting in their own gardens.
The planting day also launched “Fruitful California,” a FTPF initiative in collaboration with the Arbor Day Foundation and UPS to increase urban canopy, support climate resilience and connect people to locally-grown food by creating community and household orchards across the state.
Giaconi hopes these new orchards will thrive at their sites, providing fruit and lessons for all.
“It’s such an amazing opportunity for a community,” she said.
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