Our Orchard People

Suz and Chad have been PNG volunteers for five years, and dedicated their time to taking care of our berries and fruit trees.

When they wandered through the garden five years ago and asked what it was all about, little did they know they were going to be bit by the gardening bug.

They started by watering and weeding but then quickly asked to take on a really big project. That was the rehabilitation of our small fruit tree orchard. It was covered in weeds 6 feet tall and you couldn’t even see the trees anymore. They took out every last weed, laid down landscape fabric and wood chips to suppress weeds, and every week, came to weed and water.  They even donated a plum tree and tree pruners.

 

Suz and Chad then tackled the grapevines and we had our best ever harvest.

Then they moved onto the raspberries. The raspberries in the south garden were so overgrown, we could only harvest berries from a few bushes along the path. It was near impossible to push further into the middle to harvest. Suz and Chad rehabilitated the entire patch, creating neat rows with paths that were safe to walk through to harvest. Then they repeated this work in the north garden, consolidating random canes here and there into a second patch so we could harvest more.

Suz and Chad recently moved away from the city but they have left a lasting imprint on the garden.