The Orchard at White Street Park

About

The Orchard at White Street Park was designed to combine the enjoyment of edible fruit with play features rooted in the natural playground movement.

Categories Place Botanic & Arboretum Children's Gardens Community Gardens Parks & Play Spaces

Project Details

Description

The Orchard at White Street Park was designed to combine the enjoyment of edible fruit with play features rooted in the natural playground movement. The purpose of the Orchard was to provide an alternative to typical playgrounds and nurture curiosity among children and adults about the growth and life cycles of fruiting plants. The project was initiated by a local landscape architect and aligned with the City's vision for an undeveloped future phase of this park. While there was no formal public input process, the design was refined and adjusted over a long period with input from City planning, public works, and elected officials. Ultimately, the final design and construction budget were approved by the City Council. As an effort to engage the designer and the citizens in public support, the City agreed to provide the construction of the park if the community purchased, installed, and managed all fruiting plants. The designer led the effort for community support and raised over $17,000, most of which came from the sale of corporate and personal plaques now located at the entrance and specific locations within the park. Numerous community planting efforts saw the installation of hundreds of plants and have made the Orchard what it is today.

The Orchard is an approximately 1-acre garden within a larger City Park. A perimeter fence with spring-loaded gated access doors prevents deer from browsing the edible landscape. At the main entrance, a pavilion provides shade and refuge from severe weather. A pathway, lined with granite cobbles and mulched with red terracotta chips, provides character as it winds around the site. Over 75 cultivated varieties of fruiting plants line the walkways and beyond. Visitors who wander off the mulched path may be rewarded with a unique fresh fruit or a fun and secluded space to stop and rest. A large constructed earthen mound near the bottom of the site provides vistas for those who climb up and offers two slides, 12 and 33 feet long respectively . A children's play area features a hand water pump, balance beams, a pea gravel play bin, a musical instrument, and a meandering flagstone pathway.

The Orchard has won local awards for design as it continues to grow. Features like the weeping mulberry tree room have finally taken shape as the tree matured, and the fruiting plants have grown increasingly productive as they become more established. The orchard has also become a popular location for Scout-related projects such as insect hotels, bat boxes, water tables, a chimney swift tower, the pea gravel bin, and others. Future plans include a sensory pathway and enhancement of blackberry production.

There are no entrance fees, as the site is a free-to-access public park.

Other Details

Design Firm
Columbia Engineering

Project Managers
Roger Grant, PLA

Funders & Supporters
The City of Suwanee Council

Total Cost
$250,000

Amenities & Services

walking paths
lawns
fresh free fruit
play features

Low wooden balance beam structures for children are scattered throughout a grove of fledgling trees. Full-grown trees stand tall in the back of the grove.

A crowd of children are climbing up and gathering to form a line behind a tall slide, which is propped up on a green hill.

Three children team up to use a water pump as another child rinses his hands under the spout.

The original site as it looked before the Orchard and play area were installed. It was a large, grassy clearing bordered by tall green trees.

On grand opening day, a group of adults and children are looking at a view of an open area encircled by tall trees. Other people are scattered throughout the area and the earthen mound with slides are in the right background.

Standing atop the earthen mound near the entrance to a slide provides a clear view of the park that includes healthy trees, open grassland, and a play area.

Recent Case Studies

A girl, equipped with climbing gear, glances down and beams with pride as she scales a rocky slope that is completely vertical. Her body, which boasts a straight and confident posture, is supported by a harness that leads to the top of the slope. The sky above is a muted blue color, with wisps of clouds trailing by.

Program

Brown Girls Climb INC

With a focus on mentorship, education, and community building, Brown Girls Climb creates opportunities for women and non-binary individuals of color to connect, learn, and thrive in climbing through indoor gym meetups, outdoor climbing workshops, and more.

A group of volunteers hike in a line along a thin trail as they make their way to their work site, where they will be doing trail work for the day. Thin trees cover the trail ahead of them, and in the distance are the silhouettes of vast mountains. The clear blue sky overhead promises a sunny day.

Program

Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation

The Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation helps volunteers of all ages to develop a land ethic and give back to the wilderness by opening trails, restoring heavily used areas, maintaining historic structures, and fighting weeds in Montana’s 1.6 million acre Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.

An aerial view of the garden, with the multi-story Unicare Bakke hospital in the background. Groves of mature, leafy trees flank the vertical axes of the rehabilitation garden.

Place

Unicare Bakke Hospital Rehabilitation Garden

The 6000 square meter Unicare Bakke Rehabilitation Garden was designed to create a more accessible and useful outdoor environment for therapists and their patients receiving physical rehabilitation based on evidence collected from survey research.