Thomas MacMillan File Photo.
Edgewood Park won a national election to get a new fruit orchard — by close to 10,000 votes more than the next closest community.
New Haven’s Friends of Edgewood Park formed just one team out of 120 in 20 states nationwide competing for the prize.
The prize: a grant from the Edy’s (as in ice cream) Fruit Tree Foundation’s “Communities Take Root” program. Contestants had to rally supporters to email votes continually over time to win the competition. Friends of Edgewood Park mustered some 33,000 votes.
Edy’s announced the results at midnight on its website.
The grant will pay for 44 new fruit trees in the 123-acre park — - returning a vital resource to one of the city’s true treasures.
“We will either plant the trees this Fall or next spring based on volunteer interest and getting a water source to the site,” reported Jessica Feinlab, an organizer of the Edgewood Park effort.
The city has offered to match the grant by planting trees in other parks.
Click here to read the Edy’s checklist of, in Feinleib’s words, “the things we will need to plant and how the day will go when we get to that point.”