New England Botanic Garden’s Historic Apple Orchard

The apple collection at New England Botanic Garden began as a passion project of Stearns Lothrop Davenport, a former trustee of the Worcester County Horticultural Society, who decided during the Great Depression to make preserving heirloom apple varieties his life’s work. Because of Davenport’s commitment to collecting and reproducing unique heirloom apples, the orchard showcases 119 antique varieties in an orchard of 238 trees. 

Today, the Frank L. Harrington Sr. Orchard, is in its newest chapter. In 2018, New England Botanic Garden began a restoration project to replace the 238 trees in collection which had reached the end of their intended lifespans and were facing increased disease pressure. Using scionwood collected from trees in the Davenport Collection, Fedco Trees in Maine helped propagate new saplings which were planted at the Garden in the spring of 2021. The project was completed in summer of 2022.

Mark Richardson, director of horticulture, led the restoration project. He says the project was important because apples can’t be preserved in a seed bank. The only way to preserve their genetic material is through living collections. If heirloom varieties are lost, with them could go any undiscovered genetic traits, like novel resistances to drought, pests, and diseases, that might benefit tree breeding research programs in the future. This is especially important in the age of climate change.

The Orchard in the News

Beyond conservation, preserving heirloom crops is also a way to chronicle history. During the Great Depression, Stearns Lothrop Davenport (1885–1973), working for the Massachusetts Department of Food and Agriculture, directed a Work Progress Administration (WPA) project charged with felling abandoned apple trees that were harboring insects and diseases and negatively affecting commercial orchards. Davenport began to worry he might be turning the last varieties of some apple trees into firewood, losing their unique qualities, unusual histories, and genetic material forever. He began grafting scionwood from the rare varieties he encountered to trees in his own orchard at Creeper Hill in North Grafton.

Stearns Lothrop Davenport

Russell Powell, author of “Apples of New England,” says Davenport may have done more to preserve heirloom apple varieties than anyone in the 20th century. Davenport worked with researchers at UMass Amherst to develop a list of 100 varieties worth saving and spent much of his life sleuthing – around New England, the United States, and beyond – for the missing trees from which he could collect scionwood. He shipped more than 12,000 scions around the world from the orchard he started in the 1930s. One of the apples in the collection at New England Botanic Garden is the Davey, a variety Davenport selected particular traits he thought worthy of reproducing in 1928.

As secretary of the Worcester County Horticultural Society, which had a long history of celebrating a rich diversity of agricultural produce at regular expositions, Davenport worked to maintain and expand his experimental preservation orchard project. After his passing in 1973, the Society, which at the time didn’t own land for an orchard, collaborated with Old Sturbridge Village to give the heirloom apple varieties a new home. There the collection remained for decades, as scionwood was gathered for distribution each spring and apples were harvested for exhibitions and cider making each fall.

In 1986, the Worcester County Horticultural Society purchased Tower Hill Farm in Boylston. The property had served as a dairy farm for generations and had plenty of space to host Davenport’s heirloom apple collection. Staff and volunteers, led by WCHS trustee Gladys Bozenhard, harvested scionwood from the OSV trees, grafted the small branches to dwarfing rootstock, and cared for the saplings in a nursery at New England Botanic Garden until they were ready to be planted.

Dedicated in fall 1990, the Frank L. Harrington Sr. Orchard, named for a fruit tree enthusiast and generous WCHS donor, contained 119 varieties on 238 trees. Over the years, Garden staff distributed scionwood through a mail order program, harvested apples for fall exhibitions, and sold some apples to local brewers to make cider. Tours provided opportunities to teach the public about the importance of biodiversity, pollination, and pest control. Media organizations such as Yankee Magazine, Victory Garden, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, shared stories about the orchard near and far.

What is particularly special about the trees in the Frank L. Harrington Sr. Orchard is that they are the same genetic material as the original trees they are named for. The apple varieties you know and love don’t “come true” when grown from seed, so they are asexually or clonally propagated through the process of grafting. Grafting allows apple growers to grow desirable named varieties that have specific properties like taste, color, disease resistance, or hardiness.

For example, every Macoun apple eaten today is genetically identical to the first Macoun tree named by the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in 1923. Scionwood collected from that first tree where carefully spliced onto other apple trees and apple rootstocks to create more Macoun trees. If you planted a seed from your Macoun apple, the fruit from that tree might taste similar to a Macoun, but thanks to bees transporting pollen from one variety to another, the fruit you grew from seed to tree would include notes of other apple varieties.

Portrait of Johnny Appleseed from the Garden’s Horticultural Heroes exhibit.

That Red Delicious apple at the grocery store? It’s derived from the same tree selected years ago and all the trees of that variety have come from scionwood bought, sold, and traded throughout the decades. Not seeds. Johnny Appleseed, born nearby in Leominster and famous for spreading apples across the United States during the 19th century, was ultimately promoting cider. Personally against grafting, his trees produced apples that were only suitable for fermenting. And in those days, when the procurement of clean drinking water was a difficult task, cider was especially important.

Heirloom apples are varieties of apples with historic or noteworthy origins that are increasingly rare in today’s supermarkets. Over the decades, apples have been selected to travel well, including varieties you’d recognize at the supermarket. What has been lost is variety and genetic diversity. Heirloom orchards maintain that history by acting as living museums. The orchard at New England Botanic Garden is no different. Also, we think you’ll agree with us that heirloom varieties just taste better! 

Orchard Photos Through the Years