Residents in Milwaukee’s Williamsburg and Grover Heights neighborhoods have a new option to find apples, plums and pears.
The Five Points Neighborhood Association is adding another orchard and purchasing the Nigella Community Orchard and Garden at the corner of East Nash and North Second streets from the city for $2.
The organization already operates an urban orchard nearby, at West Vienna Avenue and Port Washington Avenue, equipped with benches and fruit trees.
That orchard aimed to address food insecurity and provide green space in a community full of vacant lots and abandoned buildings. The newly added orchard will have the same mission.
“If people have the opportunity to have access to healthy food without pesticides, that’s a lot better,” said Churchill Caruthers Jr., a Five Points Neighborhood Association board member responsible for neighborhood beautification.
He said many people in this area are on fixed incomes and with food prices rising, having something as simple as nutritious fruit is much better than junk food.
The Nigella Community Orchard occupies two parcels – 130 W. Nash and 118-124 W. Nash – and totals almost 8,000 square feet. The group paid $1 for each ticket.
The property was landscaped in 2017 by the city’s Environmental Control Organization as a green space with productive apple trees and landscaping. Groundwork Milwaukee installed community garden beds on the property about two years ago. The Nigella Orchard was one of the earlier gardens in Groundwork Milwaukee’s network, dating back to the early 2000s.
The ECO has financed the maintenance of the green space since its inception. But maintenance costs have steadily risen and in 2024 the orchard’s maintenance has been scaled back due to budgetary constraints. The orchard has fallen into disarray.
The neighborhood association is in the early stages of discussions about how to revitalize the site. Many of the garden beds have deteriorated and the wood that makes up the garden beds has been removed. Caruthers said he would like to see residents start using the beds again, but how best to do that is up for debate.
The group developed its first orchard with donated apple trees at 3776-78 N. Port Washington Ave. in 2017. in response to the lack of playgrounds in the area.
Samuel Sims, who has lived in the area for 54 years, said the children often played basketball in the street.
“They had nowhere to go,” said Sims, 87, president of the Five Points Neighborhood Association.
The group worked with several colleges, including students from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to transform the Vienna lot by adding benches and walkways. But turning the plot into an orchard was a challenge.
There were previously two buildings on the site that were wrongly demolished. Concrete slabs that remained buried underground made planting trees difficult.
“When we went six inches, we hit concrete slabs, and we’re still hitting them,” Sims said.
Sims hopes to enlist the students’ help again with the Nigella orchard. Having both orchards fits in with the neighborhood association’s mission, he said.
“We fulfill an obligation to the community: building our community for the future,” Sims said. “We’re trying to do something for the kids who didn’t have a playground, didn’t have much to do. So this is what we try to do for them.”
This article originally appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Five Points Neighborhood Association buys Nigella Community Orchard
