What are the defining features of the Los Altos Heritage Orchard? Is it the Blenheim apricots? Might it be the number of trees or the acreage? Or is it how the orchard was tended when J. Gilbert Smith sold the land to the City in 1954?
Now we have a professional benchmark in the recently released report titled “Los Altos Library Courtyard Project, Los Altos California, Standards Compliance Review.” According to this report by Treanor Consulting, LLC, the historical integrity of the orchard will be based on the grid pattern of tree sites.
What do we mean by a “grid pattern”? When I look at the latest satellite image from Google Earth, the ground looks like a checkerboard with trees planted in the middle of each square. During the rehabilitation phase a year ago, the Orchardscapes work crew laid out the stakes for replanting missing trees. They stretched strings at 90-degree angles to establish the rows of trees and line up the trees in each direction on the grid.
During our first tree inventory in 2022, I found it difficult to see straight rows of trees in some sections of the orchard. Trees were missing or slightly off from where I expected if they had been planted on a 12-foot by 12-foot grid. Our previous orchardist, Phil Doetsch, told me this irregularity was due to “inter-planting.” That means planting a new tree between two existing trees on a 20-foot by 20-foot grid.
According to Treanor Consulting LLC, this change in the planting grid was related to changes in the use of tractors during the period 1880-1945 (see Primary Record HR#15, page 5). The documents by Treanor Consulting LLC are available in the agenda packet of the February 6, 2025 joint meeting of the Los Altos Planning Commission and Historical Commission.
These documents prepared by professional historians have confirmed that we do not have a clear record of the number of trees within the boundaries of the historical landmark. The number changes when unhealthy trees are removed and replaced on the grid during standard orchard maintenance. The acreage planted in trees has changed.
Aerial photographs document that the orchard trees were planted in a grid pattern. Currently, the grid is defined by the drip irrigation system installed by the City in 2024. There are 427 tree sites on the drip irrigation system where valves are laid out on a grid spaced about 12 feet apart. Some of these sites are waiting for replacement trees to fill out the grid.
We now have clarity on what is defined as the “historical integrity” of the apricot orchard.
Contributed by Jane Packard, chair of the Orchard Commons Committee
Apricot tree rows in Los Altos Heritage Orchard.
