Little Orchards. Big Impact.
The Giving Grove’s mission is to provide healthy calories, strengthen community, and improve the urban environment through a nationwide network of sustainable little orchards.
The Giving Grove began in 2013 as a grassroots effort to make free, fresh fruits, nuts, and berries available to Kansas City neighborhoods with high rates of food insecurity. The program was launched with the understanding that an orchard must be community-led and community-driven. At the neighborhood’s request, The Giving Grove helps provide the trees, supplies, and training necessary to grow a fruitful orchard.
Within a few years, The Giving Grove helped install more than 100 orchards in neighborhoods throughout Kansas City that have faced decades of environmental and health inequities, creating beautiful community spaces that each produce hundreds of pounds of free, fresh produce for the neighborhood.
After finding success with The Giving Grove program in Kansas City, its founders began expanding the program across the nation in 2019. Today, more than 300 of these little orchards, managed and maintained by more than 600 volunteer orchard stewards, are in six cities across the U.S, with dozens of new orchards added each year.
