Sam Van Aken

speaker

47 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 22 May

Sam Van Aken’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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TED Radio Hour · What we'll eat on a warmer planet · 22 May 2026 podcast

As the project continues, it's been conservation by way of the art world.

As I've been asked to create these in different locations, what I'll do is I'll research varieties that originated or were historically grown in that area, I'll source them locally and graft them to the tree so that it becomes an agricultural history of the area where they're located.

These are plums from just one tree of 40 fruit in one week in August.

Several years into the project, I was told that I had one of the largest collection of these fruit in the eastern United States, which, as an artist, is absolutely terrifying.

But in many ways, I didn't know what I had.

I discovered that the majority of the varieties I had were heirloom varieties.

Several of the varieties dated back thousands and thousands of years.

And finding out how rare they were, I became obsessed with trying to preserve them.

So I set out to create an orchard to make these fruit available to the public.

So Governor's Island is a former naval base that was given to the city of New York in 2000.

And it opened up all of this land, just a five-minute ferry ride from New York.

And they invited me to create a project that we're calling the Open Orchard, that'll bring back fruit varieties that haven't been grown in New York for over a century.

Currently in progress, the Open Orchard will be 50 multi-grafted trees that possess 200 heirloom and antique fruit varieties.

So these are varieties that originated or were historically grown in the region.

Varieties like the early strawberry apple, which originated on 13th Street and 3rd Avenue.

Since a fruit tree can't be preserved by seed, the open orchard will act like a living gene bank or an archive of these fruit.

Like the tree of 40 fruit, it'll be experiential.

It'll also be symbolic.

Most importantly, it's going to invite people to participate in conservation and to learn more about their food.

Growing up on a farm, I thought I understood agriculture, and I didn't want anything to do with it.

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