The enduring value of orchards

By Karen Blaha – Flickr: Peach orchard in bloom, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20838162

“When you lose an orchard, you sacrifice not simply a few trees… but you might lose fruit varieties particular to that locality, the wild life, the songs, the recipes… the look of the landscape, the wisdom gathered over the generations about pruning and grafting… In short, the cultural landscape is diminished by many dimensions at one blow.”

(S. Clifford, “Pluralism, power and passion,” 1994. Quoted in Contested Nature,  Phil Macnaghten and John Urry. p. 170)

To keep an orchard, to care for and maintain it, is to be a guardian of worlds past.

To plant an orchard is to be in at the creation of worlds to come.