Orchard saves apple trees

Roots to Fruits, a local company, will provide some new trees for local schools.
“The more trees we can plant at schools, the better,” said Roots to Fruits Co-founder Mark Angelini. “We want to make the process more well known.”
The company provides ecological and permaculture designers and consultation, edible landscaping, and edible landscape design with native plants
Next week, owners Trevor Newman and Angelini will present information to students at Bailey Lake and Renaissance High School about fruit trees and the environment.
Both schools get two new apple trees, to be planted with hopes of planting fruit and nut trees around the community will spread.
Roots to Fruit’s will produce the trees from trees they grew from an apple orchard on Knox Road in Clarkston, which they are restoring through a variety of work including clearing brush and restoring trees.
Newman and Angelini, Clarkston natives and longtime friends, started their company in 2010. They began restoring the orchard in 2012 after winning a grant from Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program,, a program under the United States Department of Agriculture.
The grant helped Newman and Angelini research and restore methods to save Michigan apple trees.
They restore the trees by grafting, a process that involves cutting a portion of the tree and transplanting another tree stem in place of the cut.
Apple trees grown from seed are completely different from their parent tree, so some will not produce fruit.
“In the orchard we have done a variety of grafting on trees,” Angelini said.
Newman and Angelini have worked to combine different types of trees, so they are more healthy and productive. Their work is a success.
“After we graft the tree it will start to produce fruit again,” Newman said.
Trees once dying in the orchard are thriving and fruiting again.
Their grafting work has also resulted in several different kinds of apples growing on one tree, some are brand new species.
“We have over 50 kinds of apples in the orchard, and some trees have three kinds of apples,” Newman said. “We have introduced varieties that have never existed before.”
Newman and Angelini have installed many edible landscaping projects throughout Oakland County, in the Ann Arbor area, Traverse City and many other communities. They have also worked and in other states.
Here in Clarkston, their work is visible outside KH Home on Main Street and Depot. On the south side of KH, the company planted an edible garden filled with Clover current, Alpine Strawberries and Bird’s Foot Trefoil.
Angelini and Newman said they hope planting trees and installing more edible gardens gains momentum and keeps growing in popularity.
“There is a whole town in England that adopted an edible movement that grew to be so successful it attracts tourists,”Angelini said.
Newman and Angelini said many people are becoming more familiar with edible gardening and productive landscapes, and they hope even more people in Clarkston will become familiar with their work.
“I am excited for the promise of apple trees and a land-based, local economy in Oakland County,” Angelini said.
For more information visit Root’s to Fruits website at www.ruitstofruits.biz or friend them on Facebook.