Landscape architecture students build a commemorative garden honoring Cold Spring Orchard's founders and contributors.
from the Springfield Republican
by Jennifer Picard
University of Massachusetts officials reached back to their roots last week to honor and celebrate the people who made Cold Spring Orchard - a fruit farm and research center - a reality more than 40 years ago and who support it today.Officials Tuesday showed off the plaques that sit in the orchard's Founders' Garden to honor the late Franklin W. Southwick, professor of pomology, and the Massachusetts Fruit Growers Association, which bought the orchard in 1962 and donated it to the university.
The garden is not complete, but other plaques will be placed there to honor major orchard supporters. They include the late Jesse A. Taft, an orchard adviser and teacher; entrepreneur Jack Blais of Framingham, a trust fund supporter and fruit grower, and the late Ronald J. Prokopy, a university professor of entomology lauded for his developments in integrated pest management.
Officials also bared a plaque for the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture, which has financially supported much of Prokopy's and the orchard's work.
Michael Davidsohn, a lecturer in the university's Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, led five graduate students in designing
the garden, which will be completed within a year.
It will feature a bluestone patio surrounded by an arbor, a gravel picnic area, and benches inspired by apple crates, said Davidsohn. Perennials will fill the area, including day lilies, lavender, primrose, snow-in-summer, bearded iris, hens and chicks, and johnny jump-ups.
"We tried to take a lot of the functions here and incorporate them into the design," he said.
The orchard is a farm, roadside stand, and a research facility for fruit growers and agricultural students. It is at the site of the former Hanifin dairy farm.
Jesse L. Rice of Wilbraham, whose descendants now run his Rice Fruit Farm on Main Street there, sat on the 1962 Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association board that helped acquire the orchard. The energetic 85-year-old is the only surviving association member from the 1962 board, and the only one of the original research center directors still active at the orchard.
"This has been a tremendous asset to the food industry, and really, it's the best facility in New England," he said. "Other states don't have this sort of a setup where they can do their own experimenting with different varieties, as they do here."
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