Apple Park's tree whisperer
backchannel.com
backchannel.com
I wish they would have talked to the local chapter of California Rare Fruit Growers to plan an orchard with a true diversity of interesting fruit. They had an opportunity to include a huge diversity of fruits and cultivars with the space they have, but it seems like they're not going to.
I've also read that to some degree they were recreating a specific landscape that Steve Jobs grew fond of when growing up. That doesn't really help anybody alive today, but if I were involved in the decisions, I wouldn't interfere with his wishes unless unavoidable.
If they wanted to plant native edibles they'd be stuck with a pretty limited selection of berries and nuts.
Edited to add: White Sapote and Avocado are about as close to native fruit trees as you can get in California. Apples, on the other hand, are native to Kazakhstan.
and
> Lots of pomes (Apples, Pears, etc.)
Well, the company is called Apple...
Somehow it feels like the arborist who has worked on this project for 7+ years might have done more due diligence than someone who created a HN account just to post a few sentences to complain about it.
To respond to your point: I think there's probably a good reason he chose what he did -- it's what Jobs was used to (given that the fruits they planted were the commercial fruit varieties that were commonly grown in the area when Jobs was a kid). That doesn't make it an interesting orchard worthy of the press it's gotten. And I'm sure he put lots of effort into the aesthetics of it, but he didn't in the actual selection of fruits. Also, the climate of 2050 won't be the climate of 1950 (both due to climate change and the urban heat island) -- it's possible to successfully grow many fruits that only did well in Southern CA 50 years ago. (Just to highlight the lack of forward thinking: the orchard includes many citrus fruit trees, which are going to be toast in a matter of just a few years due to HLB.)
http://www.cityfarmer.org/treesapple.jpg
(Edit: the list is from several years ago, so no idea if this is a complete list and/or accurate -- I've seen other lists that include a few more trees than are listed here.)
That being said you can be disappointed at their selection of fruit trees. It's just an opinion.
The thing that's funny about it is that the pre-silicon valley landscape that Jobs was familiar with was not native at all. None of the fruits that they are planting are native to the region (though sure, the oaks are). Most of the old growth forests in the region had already been completely logged by the the 1950s (well before that, actually). This article talks about how the redwood forests that covered the local hillsides were all clearcut in the 1800s:
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/cover/1996_Nov_...
Just on the other side of the bay (in the East Bay hills) there used to be a stand of some of the largest redwoods ever known to have existed, that were used for navigation by ships through the golden gate because they were so large.
I get it -- the building is really a monument to Jobs, and so creating his childhood vision of the valley is fine. And it's a private company -- they can do what they want. I just guess I see this tree planting as a missed opportunity, one that is being given far more credit than it deserves.
Essentially no old-growth trees remain (one, I think?); but a stand of younger redwoods does still exist in Redwood Regional Park [1].
I applaud their efforts. Seems it's just impossible to let the environment be. First everything absolutely just must be destroyed, and then, years later, somebody must spend a lot of effort and time to actually try to make it "nice" again, and they won't see the results in their lifetime anyway.