Orchard Supply Announces Community Partnership with Hollywood Orchard
SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 13, 2014 - Home and garden retailer Orchard Supply Hardware has announced a $5,000 gift to Hollywood Orchard, a local nonprofit co-founded by actor Bill Pullman dedicated to the planting and harvesting of locally grown fruit.Orchard Supply Hardware is delighted to collaborate with this group on the eve of the spring gardening season!
Hollywood Orchard’s “tree-to-table” vision is one of sustainability and community engagement through growing and sharing its local harvest of neighborhood trees. The donation by Orchard Supply Hardware, in keeping with their tradition of neighbors helping neighbors, will help expand the scope of the group’s activities, enabling more planting and, in time, a greater harvest.
“We are honored to partner with a group that does so much for the community,” said Orchard Supply Hardware President Richard Maltsbarger. “Orchard Supply Hardware got its start, after all, as a fruit growers’ cooperative in Santa Clara Valley, back when it was better known for apricots and cherries than silicon chips and start-ups. Partnering with a new collective committed to a new type of urban harvest means, in a way, that we have come full circle.”
Pullman launched Hollywood Orchard with his wife and neighbors in 2011. A life-long orchardist and fruit-lover himself, Pullman and other residents of Beachwood Canyon founded the organization to take advantage of the harvest of fruit trees already growing in the yards of Los Angeles and then to inspire neighbors to use the fruit.
Groups of volunteers map, maintain, and harvest fruit from this “virtual orchard,” which they wash and box for local food pantries or use in preserves or other food items prepared in their “pop-up” kitchens.
The group’s community events include expert instruction on topics ranging from proper pruning to the wider elements of sustainable agriculture. “This donation will not just mean more healthy, fresh fruit to use and share,” said Pullman. “It will also further reconnect neighbors to each other and to using fruit grown in their backyards.”
Orchard Supply Hardware customers will have the opportunity to meet Pullman and others from the group at the Open House celebration of the new Orchard Supply Hardware store at 415 S. La Brea Ave. in Los Angeles on March 1. You can learn more about Hollywood Orchard by visiting www.hollywoodorchard.org.
About Orchard Supply Hardware
Orchard Supply Hardware operates neighborhood hardware and garden stores focused on paint, repair and the backyard. Originally founded as a purchasing cooperative in 1931, Orchard is based in San Jose, California and operates 71 stores in California and two stores in Oregon. The stores average approximately 36,000 square feet of interior selling space and 8,000 square feet of exterior nursery and garden space. For more information, visit http://osh.com.
Media Contacts:
Daniel Garza
PRx Digital
(mobile) 408.348.3458
Roxanne Joe
Orchard Supply Hardware
(office) 408.281.3500
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