The Newtown Fruit Trail sign campaign
To provide informational signs for the trail filled with fruit and nut plants and trees along a portion of a looped multipurpose traill at the Fairfield Hills Campus.
Leader
Amy Mangold
Location
Mile Hill South Newtown, CT 06470
About the project
In June, 2016, the town of Newtown, CT, through the Parks and Recreation Department and a generous, excited group of volunteers, welcomed a groundbreaking new project to their collective landscape, a 1/4 mile paved portion of a walking loop lined with 1005 edible fruit trees, nut trees, berry bushes and healing native plants called the Newtown Fruit Trail.
The Fruit Trail is a demonstration of best-practice land-use techniques, drawing on a huge variety of native, fruiting plants and wildflowers to create a self sufficient ecosystem that provides for the health and well-being of the land, the wildlife, and the community as one.
It is becoming a common theme for towns and cities to welcome community gardens or even small stands of fruit trees onto pulic land. The Newtown Fruit Trail offers one of the largest free, edible, public, perennial landscape in this area. Newtown's own Parks and Recreation department is determined to carry this project through with maximum care and efficiency from start to finish. Standing back 4 seasons later the prjoect is a great success, already beautiful to behold, drawing together members of the community and improving the health of the very land it grows.
One of the goals and common requests of visitors is to learn more about the growth and foliage that is flourishing there. We have wanted to educate the visitors on the plantings and informaton about the trail through signage, and also share with volunteers and visitors what is ready for harvest and supported maintenance. We want to use the money raised to provide signage and a kiosk to help with that goal of education, knowledge and instruction for all visitors and volunteers.
The Steps
1. Have a local artist create the signage to fit the project theme and design to make the educational and instructional signage.
2. Once the signs are created, get them to a local sign printer to have them created and placed on durable outdoor mounts.
3. Have volunteers ready to help install the new signs and kiosk during our event titled Fruit Trail Reawakening on September 19th and 20th, 2020.
Why we‘re doing it
On the morning of June 11th, 2016 more than 50 volunteers showed up at Fairfield Hills to install this long-anticipated Newtown Fruit Trail. Together the people of Newtown worked as one beautiful team, a true community, bringing the Fruit Trail to life not only with ease, but with pleasure. Together then and continuing now, Newtown enjoys the pleasure of world-repair, doing something at last to heal the town, to honor the earth, and to work in harmony for a truly better community. That weekend and continuing on each growing season, we all come together for the long-term health of our town, our land, and our planet. With shovels at hand, and now fresh fruit and friends side by side, the work we continue to do at the trail is a thriving image of what a community can do together, everyone's good, loving work, woven forever into the landscape. We look forward to this Rewakening to improve on this wonderful project even more with the goals of signage complete.