A well-known 19th-century nurseryman and fruit breeder, John B. Moore cultivated a fine apple orchard of approximately forty trees that he put up for sale in 1857. The orchard captured the heart of Amos Bronson Alcott, who considered the apple the most perfect of fruits. So taken was he with the property’s six apple varieties that he named his new home Orchard House.
The old orchard once stretched across what is now Alcott Road, and it was the building of that road that spelled the orchard’s end. For roughly a century afterward, Orchard House had no orchard at all. In the May 15, 2022, issue of Discover Concord, I described how the orchard was re-established. Today, it holds eleven heirloom apple trees that reach some fifteen feet in height and bear fruit from midsummer through October. The varieties include Baldwin, Golden Russet, Lady, Northern Spy, Porter, Rhode Island Greening, Sops of Wine, and Winter Pearmain. Certified arborists and volunteers from the Massachusetts Master Gardeners prune, weed, and mulch the trees, which are watered by an underground irrigation system drawing on our own well.
We are deeply indebted to these experts, whose care makes the orchard as authentic a re-creation of the Alcotts’ as possible, honoring the family’s abiding appreciation of—and reliance on—the gifts of nature. Alcott himself supplemented the family income by selling apples and often bartered with them for services such as carpentry. He, his wife, Abba, and their elder grandson, Frederick, made apple cider, and the whole family regarded the fruit as a kind of medicine. Modern research lends some support to that faith. The pectin and soluble fiber in apples aid circulation, their roughage eases digestion and constipation, and their polyphenols carry anti-inflammatory benefits.
Alcott, who once wrote, “He who keeps a garden still his Eden keeps,” also planted a large kitchen garden—which we have restored this year—and encouraged each of his daughters to grow the particular flowers she loved. We have re-created these plantings as a Little Women garden.
We hope our historic landscape helps today’s visitors appreciate the organic unity of the Alcott family’s values and their delight in this property. Though we cannot offer public apple picking, the orchard remains the star of our landscape and a living expression of the family’s reverence for nature and its bounty.
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