Orchard Heritage Park in Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale, a Silicon-Valley city chockablock with tech and aerospace companies, once looked very different. Stone fruit orchards once covered its landscape and employed its citizens, and old-timers still speak fondly of oceans of pink-and-white flowers in the springtime and the summer fruit stands selling sweet apricots and cherries.
There aren’t too many orchards left. But the city has preserved one 800-tree swath of the sweet, delicate Blenheim apricots that were once the local pride and joy. The orchard wraps around Sunnyvale’s community center, and features an outdoor exhibit on the entrepreneurs and farm workers that once grew fruit in the area. But the orchard is not merely decorative. Workers still pick the apricots in the summer and sell preserves and dried apricots year-round from the white Bianchi Barn alongside the orchard, a preserved redwood barn originally constructed in 1918. At the height of Sunnyvale apricot season, around early July, the park also sets up a fresh apricot stand in the community center parking lot.
