Apple Picking in the Orchard

Last Friday, September 20, a handful of Reedies gathered in the Reed Orchard on the east end of campus, through the Canyon, past Ritmanis Pond, to pick the fruit that is currently ripening on the trees. The current Garden Stewards, Maggie Miklas ‘25 and Ashley Schlipp ‘25, spent the hour showing students and other community members around the Orchard and eating their fill of ripe apples and plums. The Orchard is about half an acre of meadow smattered with various fruit trees. There are mulched paths meandering through the trees and the ever-flowering pollinator garden, and in the center sits an old wooden archway– what remains of an art thesis of olde– now covered in a thick head of grapes. The entire meadow sits in the pleasant shade of a magnificent black walnut tree, which, according to the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Scholar Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey ‘24, is one of the campus’s most beautiful trees. 

I chatted with the Garden Stewards about their role in the Orchard. Miklas and Schlipp take a more passive role in the Orchard area compared to the garden, leaning on the already abundant ecosystem to further the wild and natural aesthetic of the place. They value the diversity of species they find in the Orchard, only pulling invasive species where they crop up and maintaining the paths with wood chips. 

Kaplan-Kinsey's role in the Orchard leans more academic, and they commented on their help in curating the syllabus for Writing Reed, a class by English professors Sarah Wagner-McCoy and Simone Waller. The class aims to interrogate the history and value of the Reed Orchard, and to perhaps come to a deeper understanding of its current role and potential future. What is an orchard? What is this orchard? What does it mean to us?

Kaplan-Kinsey remarked upon the Orchard’s underutilization: Reedies don’t know about this place, so abundant with free food, especially this time of year. There is something intrinsically different about an outdoor community space that is as wild and free as the Orchard is. It makes you pay attention to your surroundings in a way that a curated lawn never will.

The Orchard was planted for Reed’s 100th anniversary, and for a long time fell into disarray, overgrown with blackberries and ivy. It has since been somewhat restored to something new. Although there is much work to be done, it is already a place of meaning to the community, as expressed by a passing neighbor during the fruit picking. With enough communal attention and care, the Orchard will continue to evolve collaboratively between the Reed community and the resident ecosystem.