Three More Orchards Take Root in Green Bay

October 20, 2023- Three more orchards were added to Green Bay Area Public School District (GBAPS), as part of New Leaf Food's partnership with Leadership Green Bay and the GBAPS. These schools are Edison Middle School, Southwest High School, and Lombardi Middle School. If you are unfamiliar with the School Orchard Initiative, watch this clip of Tom Murphy, representative of Leadership Green Bay, explaining how they came to be involved with New Leaf Foods and GBAPS. To get an overview of how GBAPS became involved with the orchard initiative, watch this clip of Amy Fish. 

Continue reading below for the full interview with Tom Murphy of Leadership Green Bay, and Amy Fish, Associate Director of Community Partnerships and Grants of GBAPS. 

Interview with Tom Murphy, Leadership Green Bay

New Leaf Foods: Could you describe your role within the community leadership team and your specific responsibilities related to the orchard project?

Tom Murphy: I'm part of the 2023 class of Leadership Green Bay. Leadership Green Bay is a program of the Greater Green Bay Chamber currently in its 40th year. It's a community leadership development program [where] participants learn all about the history of Green Bay and Brown County. It involves projects with the government [on] environmental initiatives, and just trying to contribute to make the Green Bay Area a little bit better.

NLF: What motivated Leadership Green Bay to get involved with New Leaf Foods in this initiative, and what contributions or expertise does your team bring to the project? 

TM: New Leaf Foods reached out to the Leadership Green Bay program looking for assistance with the urban food forest and orchard program. Our project team [was] looking for a project and a partner to work with. We wanted our project to have an environmental focus; food insecurity was an issue that was really important to us and that we wanted to help with. When we saw that request come in from New Leaf Foods, it made a lot of sense and it really fit well with what we were looking to contribute with in our project. 

NLF: How are you engaging with the local community to garner support and involvement in the orchard project?

TM: In this instance, we reached out and partnered with Green Bay Area Public School district. Our project originally started at Chappell Elementary on the west side of Green Bay. Due to our generous sponsors and the amount of funding they provided. We've now been able to expand our project, up to five schools. Green Bay Area Public School district has been a wonderful partner to work with on this orchard project. A lot of their staff has provided expertise on planting the trees, in combination with some of the AgScience programs they have for the students. They're going to help maintain and care for these trees in the long run so that these trees will continue to provide for the school district, and for students, for years and years to come.

NLF: How do you see the orchard fostering community connections and improving the quality of life in the neighborhood? 

TM: Just having access to fresh, local food, students are going to benefit from that. Students in the school district are incorporating these trees in this orchard into some of the learning so that, as the students help with the harvest every year, they can take some of this fruit that's collected. [They can] use it in some of the AgScience courses, give it our right in the cafeteria, send it home to potentially needy families, and it can be donated to local food pantries. I think, as the community goes by and sees these trees, sees what it's delivering both to the students in the area and then ultimately benefitting the wider community, it [will be] a great thing. Every apple, every pear that's grown here, that's one less that the taxpayers have to chip in for as well. A lot of benefits to the overall community.

NLF: How can the community get involved and support the orchards?

TM: Reach out to some of the local nonprofits such as New Leaf Foods that are championing efforts [for] increasing the supply of local food. Together, working with some of these nonprofits - their expertise, their knowledge - you can take some of that and apply it to your own yard, your own school, your own community, and help ensure equitable access to food for everyone. 

NLF: Are there any unique features or elements you're incorporating into the orchard to make it a meaningful community asset?

TM: At Chappell Elementary, in addition just the trees, Leadership Green Bay and New Leaf Foods also planted a large area of different native pollinator plants to promote the health growth of trees and pollination of future crops. I think that's something you need, it's not just the trees - having those native pollinators is important to our entire ecosystem.

Interview with Amy Fish, Associate Director of Community Partnerships and Grants of Green Bay Area Public School District

New Leaf Foods: What inspired the school district to embark on this orchard project, and what are the primary goals and objectives?

Amy Fish: The school district, and my role, is dedicated to bringing in different partnerships to enhance and enrich our learning opportunities. This was just another way that aligned with that goal. Bringing fresh fruit and fresh trees into our school curriculum is a great way for our students to have hands on activities and to really bring the learning alive.

NLF: How will the orchard benefit the students, teachers, and the broader community?

AF: With any type of produce that we get at our different levels of education, they might be used a little differently. At the elementary level, I think they're gonna learn about plant cycles, different parts of trees, and the produce that each tree can bring. At the high school level, they might be using it in more cooking classes. Certainly, the agriscience class is going to be utilizing the produce, [will] be caring for the trees, and heavily involved in that alignment to the curriculum and programs. 

NLF: Can you share the school district’s experience with the orchard project, from planning to implementation?

AF: It started, probably, years ago, honestly, when we started partnering with FooWIise - which is out of UW Extension - and they really helped us build our capacity for school gardens. Through school gardens, we really kind of grew into what is now our orchard gardens. It's been steadily building up momentum and capacity within the schools to take on leadership around student involvement in the garden project, [and] student involvement in the orchards. So, when we were presented with this opportunity from Leadership Green Bay - that they wanted to donate some orchard trees - one of my first steps is, "What schools are already heavily involved with the school garden, and now are ready to take this next additional step to start doing some more orchard trees into their curriculum?" So, we reached out to some schools, [who] were very excited and interested. Our facilities department is fabulous to work with, so they jumped right on board to help in the planting and installation of the trees. And, here we are today with - I believe - five schools that received donations from Leadership Green Bay's generosity. I think all of our schools are really excited to start using the trees within their programs.

NLF: Are there any potential roadblocks that the school district anticipates in the orchard's installation, and how are you planning to address them?

AF: There's always things that maybe we don't anticipate, but we try to prepare. One of the things that I couldn't anticipate is, where do we shovel snow, make sure that our trees aren't impacted by that? That's really where that partnership between our facilities department came in, and we were able to uncover some of those future roadblocks. Of course, we can't control the weather - [we] can't control staff changes, to make sure that we always have somebody who's really willing to take on and embed the orchard into whatever program or club that might be able to utilize it - but we'll continue to navigate that as it comes, and work with the new staff, and make sure that each building realizes what the benefits of this program [and] donation can bring to their school's community. 

NLF: How do you envision the orchard project fitting into the broader educational and community development goals of the school district? 

AF: Our school district is committed to creating more sustainable and eco-friendly buildings, so I think that this falls really nicely with that. I know specifically at Southwest their FFA, and agriscience department has been committed to how can they have their students be more involved in sustainability within agriculture. They grow all their own lettuce here, and that lettuce is now the lettuce that they use in their food service. I think that adding these orchard trees will elevate that work around sustainability, and it really aligns nicely with our district goals.