Growing the commons and community!
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Help Yourself!, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) for benefit organization planting community fruit trees in public places in Western Massachusetts, with food free for all to harvest. Maintained by volunteers, our orchards offer fruit, herbs, vegetables and flowers. We ignite excitement and curiosity about perennial agriculture, food access and land use, as we strengthen bonds between communities and the land we are all part of.
Ignored and unused spaces are transformed into delicious and productive forest gardens! Fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and useful herbs replace grass and gravel. We create opportunities to meaningfully connect with our shared commons, our workshops empower participants with practical knowledge, and volunteering brings the community together restoring abundance to the land. |
Plant a public fruit tree today!
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Public access gardens & orchards:
Our projects stretch across the Pioneer Valley, focusing on Northampton, Holyoke and Greenfield. We plant at public schools, community gardens, community organizations, bike paths, parks and conservation land and more.
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Help Yourself is volunteer and donation funded. There are many ways to support our work and to volunteer: donate funds, help during site prep and planting days, finding new places to plant, fund-raising, becoming a tree steward, starting a nursery for baby fruit trees in your yard, and leading plant walks for the community.
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Featured planting projects:
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Manhan Rail Trail, Northampton: Since 2012, we've been transforming the Manhan Rail Trail with fruit trees and grape vines, free for bike commuters and pedestrians to harvest from. We've put in hundreds of grape vines, roses, berry bushes, and fruit trees, stretching more than a mile from Pleasant st. to Veteran's Field. In the Maplewood shops parking lot, we've established the central 'Frogtown' Garden, turning bare grass and gravel into 'no-mow' areas for pollinator habitat, with PYO culinary herbs, fruit trees, benches, and a mural.
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Orchards at Public K-12 Schools: We've planted more than 500 fruit trees with students at more than twenty different public K-12 schools in the Valley, with herbs and flowers beneath them. These mini forest gardens offer hands-on outdoors educational opportunities for students. Teachers and volunteers are supported in bringing permaculture to the classroom, and create connections between human communities of learning and the land.
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Former HCG / Courthouse Lawn, Northampton: At the intersection of King and Main St, on Northampton's 'front yard', we've installed a 200' foot hedgerow of Asian pears, juneberry, aronia and honeyberry, wildflowers and herbs!
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Free food in public spaces! Just imagine:
- Free to use and harvest raised vegetable beds and planters around towns
- Grapes, kiwis, roses and beans climbing along fences and railings
- Edible hedges of plums, juneberries, blueberries and hazels along sidewalks
- Fruit and nut trees that shower communities with edible wealth for generations
- Mini wildflower meadows attract pollinators, pest predators, and eliminate mowing
- Abundant herb gardens offer free and effective medicine for those in need
- Informative signage and volunteer led plant walks orient us to the land, describe what can be harvested and used, and create conversations about shared land use.
What if whole communities got behind such effort, and began to seriously tackle issues of food accessibility and security How would this transform the landscapes - our human habitat, and our relationship to it, our communities, and ourselves?
