Welcome to Northwest Fruit Garden Tour
You are at the first station of our 53 unique station fruit collection. Scan the QR code
on each station sign to read more about the fruiting plants at that station. Look at the
fruit garden map to find points of interest. You can start at station #1 and either
proceed through the stations in numerical order or simply wander the garden and scan the QR code on the sign to tell you more about that particular station.
About Our Fruit Garden
Our’s is a public six acre fruit garden with more than 700 fruit trees and bushes, open to
the public from dawn to dusk each day. You are welcome to take the tour or just wander
the garden on foot. Each tree has a sign telling you the type of fruit, the variety,
rootstock it’s grafted on and usually the year planted. Please park in the parking lot.
Please do not pick the fruit or cut any branches. It is easy to become a volunteer member
of the fruit garden and become involved in harvesting fruit and attending classes. (nwfruit.org)
How To Get Involved in this Fruit Garden
The work in this fruit garden is done entirely by volunteers. Each Thursday from 9 a.m.
to noon and again on Saturday mornings in late spring and summer home fruit growers
come to work in the garden. We learn from each other. Some of us have decades of fruit
growing knowledge and others are just starting to grow fruit. Some have their own home
orchards and others have no property and this is their only fruit garden. Each of us pays
$30 a year to be a member and we get to harvest fruit, make cider, attend classes and
become part of our fruit garden community. As volunteers we each choose which
projects we want to work on. Click here to become a member and a volunteer.
How did this garden get started
In 1990 the fruit garden was started here at the Washington State University Research
and Extension Unit. Prior to 1990, under the guidance of WSU station Director Dr.
Robert Norton, WSU was testing fruit varieties from around the world to see which ones
would perform best in our unique Western Washington climate. Dr Norton started the
variety testing in the 1970’s and it continued to about 2010. He would test hundreds of
fruit varieties. After fruiting each variety for a few years, the information would be
published in WSU guidebooks and the trees would be taken out to make room to test
new incoming varieties. Interested fruit growers realized that the best of these proven
varieties should not be taken out but instead needed to be planted in a permanent
garden so that our region’s fruit gardeners could continue to harvest and enjoy the fruit.
How the Fruit Garden Tour was developed
In about 2012 Kristan Johnson and Kim Siebert designed a 40 station fruit garden tour
that included QR codes so people could come and learn about the garden. Or they could
learn online from our NWFruit.org website.
In 2025 Sam Benowitz worked with Bob Ness to receive a grant from the Skagit
Community Foundation to update the tour to accommodate the now 53 different
collections. In addition to the QR code based tour, they also got funding to have Andrew
Tuttle and Mary Marshall of the Edge Perma company develop a drone based birds eye
tour where the garden can be viewed from the air and people can then select areas of
interest to focus on. (YouTube video)
Benowitz, former owner of Raintree Nursery, contributed many of the plants over the
years to the garden and wrote the text for most of the 53 stations. He was aided by
volunteers Larry Crum who worked on the antique apples, Beth Jones on the
blueberries, Bill Pierce the grapes and Ned Garvey on the figs.
Scott Terrell provided most of the photos. Laura Wilson drew the maps and provided
the crucial inventory. Mike Harding worked on the many signs. Jim Jones entered the
text into the computer and Joe Flynn provided the internet expertise. The project would
not be completed without their many hours of work.
The people who have made this garden a reality
Dr. Robert (Bob) Norton was assisted for decades by WSU staff Gary Moulton and Jacky
King who continue to teach in the fruit garden. They were assisted by fruit orchardist
Les Price.
The Fruit Garden was designed by landscape architect Kristan Johnson. Sam Benowitz
joined Kristan in starting the garden. Don Shakow was a founder and the first fruit
garden President.
Many volunteers have devoted hundreds or thousands of hours in keeping the fruit
garden thriving. When we inevitably leave people out of named recognition please tell
us and we will add their names. We thank you all so much.
Kim Siebert led our organization for many years and contributed to its success in many
ways. Our early day volunteers include Bill Davis who taught hundreds of us how to
graft and prune. He learned from Walt Lyons. Dick and Marilyn Tilbury helped us for so
many years. We also thank Dr. Chet Schwartz, Knox Nomura and Laure Janzen. Thanks
also to Lori Brakken for curating our Northwest Heritage apple collection.
Thank you to our fruit garden managers De Arbogast and later Tom Wake and fruit
garden manager Colleen Sanders and past presidents Chuck Holland and Sue Williams.
In 2026 when this was written here are our current regular volunteers who keep our
operation going. Thank you Bob Baines, Jay Scott, Richard and Jennifer Fairfield, Larry
Crum, Beth Jones, Hazel Sitner, Laura Wilson, Carol Jacobsen, Carol Butz, Faraneh
Cooper, David Cooper, Bill Pierce, Jonathan Wolman, Bob Ness, Larry Hedgepath,
Scott Terrell, Bill Slater, Samantha Chang. Jim Jones, Joe Flynn, Mike Harding, Jake
Jacobson, Peter Palmer, Peter Reuckert, Larry Lundeen and Ken Miller. Thank you
also to all those volunteers who helped us each for many years in the past.
