Welcome to ONE tREE Orchard, we’re super excited that you’re here, and we hope you’ll call yourself a OtO Orchardist soon! We’re building a networked urban orchard to eliminate food waste in your backyard while helping the less fortunate in our community! OtO strives to create value-added benefits to home owners with food-bearing trees that grow our network rapidly and in the process dramatically increase the amount of food that gets rescued.
Our Story
A Lemon in the Gutter
While walking my neighborhood one morning I came across a beautiful, unblemished lemon lying on the side of the street. A feeling of joy and gratitude came over me as I rolled it around in my hand and marveled at its perfection. What a gift to be able to bring this fresh lemon home to enjoy with dinner! Then I looked over to the tree it had fallen from. Several more lemons just like the one I held in my hand lay there on the ground, along side more that had begun to spoil. As I continued my walk I couldn't help but notice the fruit trees growing at house after house. Some houses had more than one, but many had just a single tree growing amazing fruit; all different varieties of lemons, oranges, grapefruit, avocados, loquats, and more!
The 800# Gorilla in the Yard
Did you know that some mature citrus trees can produce more than 800#s of fruit EVERY YEAR?! My walks were never the same. I contemplated the shear number of houses with trees, the amount of work required to maintain them, and the likely amount of waste that was occurring all over the area as homeowners struggled to figure out what to do with all this fruit! And then I recognized the opportunity in this challenge. What if we could network all these trees to create a huge dispersed suburban orchard to rescue food for the less fortunate living right here in Orange County, and provide with benefits for each homeowner beyond a basic tax donation?
From ONE tREE, many gifts
And from that idea, One Tree Orchard was born. OTO's unique fruit exchange goes beyond simple food rescue to incentivize homeowners to give and tell their neighbors about us. One Tree Orchardists can choose to exchange a portion of their fruit for another orchardist's, effectively multiplying the number of