The Open Orchard on Governors Island opens to the public on April 29th. Van Aken said visitors will be able to stop by and see, and soon even taste, the fruits that other New Yorkers might have enjoyed centuries ago.
“I amassed what I was told was one of the largest collections of stone fruit in the Eastern United States, which I thought was really terrifying,” he laughed. “Like that's crazy, you know, how could, how could I be the person that has such a large collection?”One of Van Aken's Tree of 40 Fruit on the campus of Syracuse University, May 3, 2018A drawing showing the scheme for grafting on Sam Van Aken's Tree of 40 Fruit located at Syracuse University.
Then there was the task of finding the remaining trees of the rare varieties to use some of their branches as grafts. Van Aken said he combed through the orchards of local growers, the rare and antique fruit collections at universities, and worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to track down the heirloom species. He described the process of finding them all as “an enormous hunt.”