100,000 Fruit Trees for El Salvador

Dear friends,

While our orchards in the northern hemisphere continue to wake up and flower, we are delighted to share with our friends and followers recent and upcoming spring projects, as well as new opportunities and ways to get involved.

Projects in February & March

FTPF was in Florida this February for a special orchard planting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where students and teachers joined hands in the garden on the school’s day of service, which honors the fallen from 2018’s tragedy on campus. As we planted the trees together, we were reminded that fruit trees leave a lasting legacy. From the clean air we’ll breathe, to the healthy harvest our children and grandchildren will enjoy on countless summer afternoons. Trees provide us with nutrition, oxygen, shade, and shelter. Trees give us life. Special thanks to all those who helped plant, mulch, and install irrigation on this special day.

While in Florida, we also planted a mini-orchard at Hollywood Hills High School to support the school’s goals to be environmental leaders in their community. As stated in their own words, the orchard will “empower students for lives of thoughtful inquiry, service, leadership and care for other people, for our communities, and for the earth.”

In March, we helped create the largest food forest in Washington D.C. in collaboration with D.C. Parks, local group Forested, and our partners at PAHO/WHO Federal Credit Union. Sixty-five fruitful trees were planted at Lederer Gardens, which grows edible and medicinal plants for the surrounding underserved community.

Another 24 trees and 16 berries were planted at Neabsco Elementary School just outside of D.C. in Woodbridge, Virginia. As the school’s social worker Coby Cobern explained: “[The trees] are living classrooms teeming with educational opportunities where kids learn about environmental science, climate change, nutrition, and teamwork.”


Projects in April

FTPF visited the desert Southwest last month to work with the San Carlos Apache and Navajo Nation as part of our Trees for Tribes program. We aim to support food sovereignty and traditional agriculture among indigenous communities through regionally and culturally appropriate orchards. Dozens of trees will be planted and distributed with our tribal partners in Arizona and New Mexico, increasing access to fresh foods for communities living in food deserts. According to the farm manager at San Carlos Apache: “We are located in a food desert, and are one of the only food producers on the 1.5 million acre reservation. This orchard will aid us in fulfilling our mission to provide sustainable, nutritious food to the community of the San Carlos Apache tribe, and provide more opportunities to provide youth education services to the community.”

Also in April, our Uganda-based team distributed over 30,000 trees to smallholder farmers, low-income families, and schools. As temperatures continue to rise and rainfall is increasingly inconsistent due to climate change, multifunctional landscapes featuring food-producing trees are critical to ensure livable, viable communities.

New Merch Launch

We are excited to announce that we have a new merch store, where you can purchase FTPF products including shirts, hats, water bottles, and mugs to show your support for our work. At nearly every orchard planting event, we are asked if we have items available – so now we do! All products are organic or recycled and vegan, and there are customization options as well.

Orchard Updates

To end on a happy note, we’d like to share an update from one of our orchards in California. At The Ecology Center – a regenerative urban farm near Los Angeles – the 26 fruit trees planted in 2009 are thriving, averaging 50 pounds of harvest per year. Additional trees have also been planted to further regenerate the historic agricultural land. Ali Berens, development assistant at the Ecology Center says: “The orchard brings biodiversity and beauty to our farm, providing our community with an abundance of delicious fruit to taste and enjoy!”

If you have received an orchard from FTPF, please take a moment to fill out our annual orchard survey. This is an important part of our work, allowing us to improve and build on our programs over time. We send out an email reminder for the survey once a year, typically in the fall/winter.

Wishing everyone a beautiful and blossom-filled spring,

The FTPF Team

Dear friends:

As we conclude another bountiful year at the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, I am eager to share not only our accomplishments but also some personal anecdotes that fuel my passion for this vital work.

My journey with FTPF began nearly a decade ago. I found myself at a celebration for the opening of our Hawai’i Island nursery, where our Director Cem painted a vision of flourishing communities filled with locally-grown fruit and abundant orchards, free for all to pick and enjoy. This vision resonated deeply with me, and within a week, I was on a plane to volunteer on projects with the Hopi tribe and New Mexico pueblos. After a transformative year of volunteering, I joined the team in 2015.

Since then, I have helped coordinate the planting of tens of thousands of trees in diverse settings – schools, parks, public housing, community gardens, hospitals, community centers, animal sanctuaries, and food forests. I've had the honor to work with communities in Brazil, Peru, El Salvador, Guatemala, Uganda, and, most recently, the launch of our newest project in Honduras – witnessing the power of fruit trees to provide nourishment in both rural and urban settings.

The beauty of this work lies in its simplicity – a return to the age-old practice of living alongside fruit trees. It's about coexisting with nature, cultivating mangoes, apples, cherries, jackfruit, or cacao in harmony with our needs and those of local ecosystems. It is a return to a more sustainable form of agriculture, one that honors the knowledge of small farmers and local growers who have been cultivating traditional foods for generations. It is also about reconnecting those of us in urban settings to nature and our food, creating community spaces where we can gather, grow, and connect with each other and our environment.

For me, this is more than a job; my experiences with FTPF have spurred a passion for creating a just and sustainable food system rooted in local knowledge and community participation. It has also inspired me to return to school to pursue academic research on the roles agroforestry and sustainably managed orchards play in creating such a system.

A few of my favorite moments this year have been the planting of our first trees in England, where I currently reside; the honor of launching our very first project in Honduras that aims to push back against destructive monocultures through the planting of native and food-bearing trees with small farmers; being on-site for our second-ever orchard planted at a prison in the United States, bringing meaningful outdoor time and skill-building opportunities to inmates in Ohio; and a return to the tribal lands of the Saginaw and Red Lake tribes, where we planted new orchards and witnessed the growth of ones we'd planted in previous years.

The gifts of this organization have been abundant for me personally, but more importantly, the offerings of the orchards we plant are enduring and tangible for the communities they serve. Below are highlights from this year, including some reflections from participants in our programs:

Launched our first-ever project in Honduras by planting 2,600 native and food-producing trees

Planted 30,000 trees in Uganda with small farmers and in community spaces: “We are very happy … it’s not only a tree, but fruits! We are under a tree, but with fruits. We've got a tree, and fruits! We are very pleased and we want to ensure you we will keep these trees, every tree we planted must grow up, I ensure you." -Teacher and youth mentor to students participating in orchard planting at Kybazinga Park, Jinja, Uganda

Planted 8,000 trees in Peru with six rural communities along the Amazon and Napo rivers

Planted 6,800 trees in El Salvador with farmers' cooperatives and at schools: “Every year we are planting trees … This is a blessing that today a delegation from another country is coming to help and to see that it is really important to be able to grow trees in this place.” -President of San Carlos II Cooperative in Osicala, El Salvador

Planted 175 trees in Guatemala at schools and low-income family homes: “We are grateful for the visit … and here we can already see the fruit of our work. The plants are growing well and I am very hopeful that one day we will be able to harvest and enjoy the fruits. Thank you with all my heart to all those who are supporting this project.” -Carlos Cifuentes, Sixth Grade Teacher, Casa Guatemala school in Rio Dulce, Guatemala

Planted 31 orchards across the United States: "What brought me out here today is a chance to give back. Tree planting is one of these things that is so fulfilling. We need trees and plants on our earth to survive." -Katina, volunteer at Randall's Island planting in New York City

Performed aftercare visits over the summer to provide guidance and collect data: "The magic is when you stand in the orchard, pick the fruit off the tree yourself, rub it on your shirt to clean it off, that's the connection. There's no fruit that tastes as good as these straight from the orchard." -Rita LeRoy, Farm Manager, Loma Vista Farm, Vallejo, California

As we celebrate the planting of 48,900 trees in 2023, we also envision the countless benefits ripening alongside the harvests – healthy nutrition, income generation, oxygen production, carbon sequestration, environmental cooling, water filtration, soil stabilization, and the creation of habitats for diverse wildlife, to name just a few.

In this spirit, I invite you to join us in reflecting on the profound impact we've collectively made this year and to look forward to the seeds of change we'll sow together in the coming year. Please consider supporting our work by making a donation to plant trees that will last a lifetime (or more)!

P.S. We are thrilled to report that for the 13th year in a row, more than 90 cents of every dollar contributed was used directly in our life-sustaining tree planting programs.