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SALT LAKE CITY — After spending a few minutes getting their hands dirty filling in a pit around a Fantasia nectarine tree, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and a group of Parkview Elementary students each placed a hand on the freshly planted tree and did a group cheer to celebrate it.
"Good luck, little tree," the mayor whispered to it as the group walked away.
This tiny tree won't bear fruit anytime soon, but if all goes to plan, these students — many between the ages of 9 and 11 — might be able to return here as adults and literally enjoy the fruits of their labor.
It is one of a few new fruit trees planted Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the completion of the 9-Line Community Orchard on the border between Salt Lake City's Poplar Grove and Glendale neighborhoods just west of Jordan Park and the Jordan River.
While Salt Lake City is home to many community gardens scattered across the city, this is the city's first community orchard. The city and the organization Tree Utah plan to plant dozens of trees of different fruits like apples, apricots, cherries, grapes, nectarines, peaches, pears and plums, as well as plants like lavender, oregano and rhubarb that residents can harvest once they're ready.
The space will also include outdoor seating and an outdoor classroom.
However, it will take some time for the whole plan to come to fruition. Tuesday marked the competition of the project, but in many ways it was more of a groundbreaking celebration than a ribbon cutting.
"You get to see the nearly finished product, but the real beauty of it won't be fully realized for about five, 10, 15, 20 years when these trees reach their maturity and this becomes a park with shade," Mendenhall said. "The best time to plant a tree is 25 years ago, but the next best time is today."
Getting here also took time.
The orchard had been a city-owned vacant 0.70-acre lot for many years when Tree Utah, a Salt Lake City nonprofit that works to plant trees, approached the city about turning it into a community orchard through the city's Capital Improvement Program.
"The idea here was like a traditional kind of you-pick orchard space for the community that we can use as an example to the rest of Salt Lake City and surrounding areas," said Amy May, the organization's executive director, explaining that it will feature multiple fruit varieties so people can learn which variety they prefer the most.
It isn't much of a novel idea. Pioneers brought many fruit trees with them when they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in the mid-19th century. Those trees played a large role in the city's agriculture scene before almost all of the farming was replaced with homes and businesses to meet the region's growth.
The Salt Lake City Council ultimately added the orchard to its list of community-inspired projects that received funding in 2018, but it required time to grow the trees and get everything together to build the orchard. It didn't help that obstacles like the COVID-19 pandemic got in the way of some projects beginning.
May believes it'll become a "community asset" once the trees reach maturity and produce fruit annually. The organization plans to hold classes on how to prune and maintain trees so residents can learn how to bring what they learn to their own homes. That's also something that the city may do in the future.
"This is a big deal. It's another hidden gem on the west side," said Salt Lake City Councilman Alejandro Puy, whose district includes the orchard. "This is another community space that we deserve, a community space that will not only be enjoyed by us visiting it, but we can also taste it."
The new orchard is a first in Salt Lake City, but it may not be the last.
The city now plants thousands of trees every year to help with environmental concerns, such as urban heat island effect. Mendenhall said she would like to see the city plant more tiny community orchards in other unused open spaces, such as wide park strips, existing parks or even along trails like the 9-Line.
"Trees that bear fruit may sense for a lot of these spaces," she said. "We want shade; we want greenery; we want the cooling effects, but when we can couple that with fresh, healthy food that you've grown right in your neighborhood, it's even better."
