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This project was eligible for matching funds through Green Up Memphis, Summer 2016!

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Urban Orchard

The Urban Orchard is intended to provide a place of beauty while also providing accessible organic fruit for the residents in a low-income blighted neighborhood in the Klondike area of Memphis.

Leader

Maricela Lou-Gaitor

Location

795 N. Claybrook Street Memphis, TN 38105

About the project

Our intention behind the Urban Orchard project is to provide a place of beauty and peace that includes fruit-bearing trees to offer fresh organic produce to a low-income blighted neighborhood in the Klondike area of Memphis. There will be many fruit bearing trees and bushes planted in a landscape that is designed in a park-like setting complete with a gazebo, benches and arbor. The orchard will take place on a purchased vacant lot that was once a plot filled with trash and overgrown weeds. This is a community effort pushed by the Midtown Mosque, AMIN Center and other groups interested in improving city neighborhoods.
We hope that the outcome will beautify the neighborhood while providing fresh healthy fruit to a community that sits in a food desert. We want to see people feel safer and more at peace in their neighborhood.

The Steps

We will first need to purchase some compost to ammend the soil. Then we will buy 15 fruit trees and plant them in the lot. We'll buy Treegator watering bags to keep the newly planted trees watered and then once they are established in place, we will start to install the benches, arbor and gazebo.

Why we‘re doing it

The Klondike area of Memphis is in need of revitalization due to it's blighted state. The neighborhoods there are filled with abandoned homes and overgrown vacant lots. Many residents that live there have to travel more than 2 miles to have access to fresh organic produce. Our intention is to revitalize that neighborhood by establishing a beautiful Urban Orchard that is bountiful with fresh organic fruits for the community.

$462.00 / $462.00