Inaugural Fruit Tree Planting! - We will be planting our first round of fruit trees in the Cumberland Community Orchard, and we’d LOVE your help! We need to get all 50 bare root apple, pear, plum, cherry, peach, mulberry, quince, and chestnut trees into the ground! We’ll have some tools on hand, but bring along a shovel and/or wheel barrow if you’ve got one!

Be prepared to get your hands dirty, have some fun, and make some new friends. We’ll be planting rain or shine. Come for the whole day, or just pop in to say hi!

Pot luck lunch around Noon. Sign up here.

Aaron Parker from Edgewood Nursery will be giving tutorials on how to properly plant fruit trees for those that want to learn starting at 9am and continuing until all the trees are planted!

Speaker: Aaron Parker, Edgewood Nurseries in Falmouth.

Lawns Gone Wild is a yearlong sustainable backyard education series and is offered in collaboration with Prince Memorial Library, the Town of Cumberland's Lands and Conservation Commission - Sustainability and Community Orchard Subcommittees, and Chebeague and Cumberland Land Trust.

We’ll be checking on all of the recently planted fruit and nut trees. Doing some weeding, planting some support species, mulching, and maintaining the pathways. If we have woodchips available we can continue mulching the rows between our trees and inoculating with wine cap mushroom mycelium to help the woodchips break down and incorporate faster. Come play, hang, learn, and get your hands dirty with us!

Adding additional perennial support species, adding woodchip mulch, and checking on all the newly planted fruit and nut trees. This is also be a great time to add some comfrey to support our fruit trees as a rhizome barrier to keep the grass back, and as a chop n’ drop mulch. Bonus, the bees love the comfrey flowers (and kids love to suck out the sweet nectar too).

Oil Free Orchard Maintenance with Scythe - In addition to checking on the trees, we’ll be giving tutorials on the use of the Orchard’s pair of European scythes. These hand tools may look intimidating, but with a little practice and a twist of the hips you’ll be mowing down grass with ease! We also have “ditch blades” for the scythes, which can cut down small woody stems to keep the field edge clear. As we look to move away from fossil fuels we hope you’ll get excited about learning to use these effective tools that have proven useful for generations.

Speaker: Jesse Lamarre-Vincent, Cumberland.

Lawns Gone Wild is a yearlong sustainable backyard education series and is offered in collaboration with Prince Memorial Library, the Town of Cumberland's Lands and Conservation Commission - Sustainability and Community Orchard Subcommittees, and Chebeague and Cumberland Land Trust.

Creating Trellises for Berries and Grapes - We’ll be creating some trellises for cane fruits and grapes, that will also serve as a nice natural border and screen between the orchard and the brush dump pad. Learn how to build a simple and effective trellises with posts, gravel, and wire. You can help out from start to finish, from digging the post holes, backfilling with dirt/gravel, and running the wires. In the end we’ll have a space for future fruits to be planted, and you’ll have the expertise to build your own sturdy trellis at home!

Speaker: Jesse Lamarre-Vincent, Cumberland.

Lawns Gone Wild is a yearlong sustainable backyard education series and is offered in collaboration with Prince Memorial Library, the Town of Cumberland's Lands and Conservation Commission - Sustainability and Community Orchard Subcommittees, and Chebeague and Cumberland Land Trust.

We’ll be poking around, seeing how things are growing, adding mulch where it’s needed, weeding, and keeping up the orchard rows. Come help out or just come and hang with fellow outdoor and orchard enthusiasts!

Pollinator Support in the Orchard - We’ll be learning about the importance of pollinators in the orchard, walk the property to help identify useful pollinator plants, and make suggestions about specific plants that would be useful to add.

Speaker: Aaron Parker, Edgewood Nurseries in Falmouth.

Lawns Gone Wild is a yearlong sustainable backyard education series and is offered in collaboration with Prince Memorial Library, the Town of Cumberland's Lands and Conservation Commission - Sustainability and Community Orchard Subcommittees, and Chebeague and Cumberland Land Trust.

As late summer sets in we’ll be keeping the grass tidy, working to prepare garden and planting beds for 2025, and generally doing whatever needs doing. We’d love to have some raised beds made and filled with compost/soil to use in 2025, maybe we can build them together! Come lend a hand, hang with friends/neighbors, and enjoy some time in our developing orchard space.

Companion Planting in the Orchard - We’ll have a walk and talk around the orchard learning about the benefits of companion planting. In addition to learning about how companion planting can benefit trees in an orchard or garden, we’ll create a roadmap for what to plant in the Cumberland Orchard in 2025 to support the growing fruit and nut trees.

Speaker: Aaron Parker, Edgewood Nurseries in Falmouth.

Lawns Gone Wild is a yearlong sustainable backyard education series and is offered in collaboration with Prince Memorial Library, the Town of Cumberland's Lands and Conservation Commission - Sustainability and Community Orchard Subcommittees, and Chebeague and Cumberland Land Trust.

Come enjoy a fall afternoon work day with orchard friends. We’ll be poking around, maybe starting to save some seeds, checking out what pollinator friends are around, and enjoying some time in nature. Hope to see you there!

Propagating Woody Plants without Grafting - Learn about different methods to propagate woody plants so that you can grow and share more plants! Methods covered will include dividing clumps/suckers, layering and stooling, softwood cuttings, and hardwood cuttings. Aaron Parker from Edgewood Nursery will be presenting.

Speaker: Aaron Parker, Edgewood Nurseries in Falmouth.

Lawns Gone Wild is a yearlong sustainable backyard education series and is offered in collaboration with Prince Memorial Library, the Town of Cumberland's Lands and Conservation Commission - Sustainability and Community Orchard Subcommittees, and Chebeague and Cumberland Land Trust.