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 man wearing a helmet and a green shirt rides an adaptive cycle on a forest trail. The trees and leaves are blurry, showing the speed of the cyclist.

Program

North Carolina Adapted Sports – Adapted Off-Road Cycling Program

Our goal is to increase trail accessibility by working with trail management teams to rehabilitate trails to make them accessible to adapted off-road cycles, e.g. handcycles and recumbent trikes. In addition, we work to introduce people with physical disabilities to adapted mountain cycling.

Six POCO members stand along a brick outcrop to take a picture in front of a mountain landscape. The Wallowas stretch far into the horizon behind them, and clouds blanket the blue sky.

Program

People of Color Outdoors

POCO helps BIPOC and White parents of BIPOC children reconnect with nature by creating frequent healing outdoor experiences in a variety of beautiful natural spaces. By offering guided hikes, paddling trips, birding excursions, skill-building workshops, and youth programs, we work to ensure that communities with histories of being excluded have what they need to reconnect with natural spaces, strengthen intergenerational connections, and take on leadership roles.

A child in a blue shirt and a child in a red shirt are playing the game Twister outdoors, on a surface of dried grass and leaves.

Program

Integrative OT

The Integrative OT program model provides nature-based occupational therapy services for children in the Birmingham, Alabama area. Integrative OT also co-hosts free Heeling Cancer hikes with a local massage therapist for adults undergoing cancer treatment or who are cancer survivors of any kind.