Become a backyard orchardist and grow your own fruit! Even in a small backyard, you can enjoy fruit from your own trees with minimal effort and cost. Our step-by-step workshop will teach you all you need to know to plan and create a compact orchard for years of enjoyment. No experience necessary. Participants will spend part of the workshop outside in the orchard for a pruning demonstration, so dress accordingly. $20/person. Space is limited; pre-registration required. 

Register at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu. For more information, call the Arnold Arboretum at 617-384-5277 or our office at 617-333-0924 x22 during business hours.

This event is co-sponsored by the Arnold Arboretum. 

Continuing with this year's theme offering "portraits of great trees," this month's Stone Soup will feature Debbie McElwaine, a Harvard Graduate student, and neighbor who has researched the tree population near the estate on Hemenway Drive. Debbie's topic will be the Metasequoia glyptostroboides or Dawn Redwood. Once thought to be extinct, this living fossil was rediscovered in China in 1941 and reintroduced to the world the Arnold Arboretum. The metasequoia's story is truly remarkable, and has a local twist. A four-square planting of these trees in the estate's formal garden is one of its character defining features. Stone Soup and Speakers events are held on the final Thursday of each month through May. These warm and casual programs begin at 5:30 pm with a bowl of tasty home-made soup, followed by a short presentation by the featured speaker. Space IS limited. Pre-registration is required. To RSVP or for more information, please call 617-333-0924.

The schedule for the rest of the Stone Soup and Speaker Series is:

April 30: Dove or Hankerchief Tree, Davidia involucrata

May 28: Chinese Dogwood, Cornus kousa