The time we planted an orchard on the roof.

I like telling people about our orchard, the 42 fruit trees in our rooftop garden, and watching their eyes go wide.

Forty-two trees?

Well yes, but they are on dwarf root stock, so they grow in pots.

We partnered with TreeCity/TreeKeepers to procure our trees, pots and soil. One Saturday morning, a large group of us moved our trees from the basement to the roof, and planted all of them in pots. We have figs, pears, apples and crabapples spread out throughout our garden.

It will be a couple of years before they produce fruit, at the very earliest, but in the meantime the bees will be very pleased with the flowers.

It’s funny, in the past few weeks, a duck has nested in our garden, and then we waddled down five flights of stairs to the ground and walked a block to the pond in the park. We’ve planted fruit trees, started some of our spring crops, worked with our bees to make sure they’re set up for the spring nectar flows – you would never know we are deep in the city.

The pot with the string running to the roof in the first photo is actually hops, we have some keen microbrewers in our co-op.