POP is thrilled to announce our newest orchard partner, TrueLove Seeds Farm at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education! This is a partnership very long in the making, with TrueLove moving between multiple farm locations before arriving at their new long-term home in Philadelphia in 2025. This blog will cover the orchard design process led by Hannah, Simone, and Carolina and share highlights from the planting day held on April 30, 2026!
Who is TrueLove Seeds?
Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Their seeds are grown by more than 70 small-scale urban and rural farmers across the country committed to community food sovereignty, cultural preservation, and sustainable agriculture. At Truelove Seeds Farm, they practice keeping seeds and building sovereignty, growing over 125 different varieties of plants, including around 100 different species. It is also very much a teaching farm, welcoming volunteers, offering workshops, and hosting apprentices. You can read more about TrueLove’s mission, programs, seed catalog, and seedkeeping podcast on their website.
POP has been a seedsaving partner with TrueLove since 2020 and POP staff have made multiple field trips to TrueLove’s various farm locations over the years (read a blog about one visit from 2019). In addition to POP, other Philadelphia based seed growers partnering with TrueLove include Sankofa Farm, Bartram’s Garden, Norris Square Neighborhood Project, Vietlead, the Karen Garden Project, Star Apple Nursery, Weavers Way Farms, Saul HS, and Lankenau HS.
POP and TrueLove also have many personal connections. Orchard Coordinator Hannah Thompson was a long time staff member with TrueLove before joining the POP team. Education Director Corrie Spellman-Lopez farmed the land now occupied by TrueLove back in 2014 during her time with Teens 4 Good. And Truelove’s Owen Taylor and POP Director of Horticulture Phil Forsyth have been friends and colleagues for over 20 years dating back to their shared time as part of the Just Food network of urban farmers in NYC. Dreams and pathways sometimes align at long last!
A new home at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
After many years and multiple locations outside of Philadelphia, TrueLove Seeds has found a long-term home on land at Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Upper Roxborough. Founded in 1965, the Schuylkill Center is one of the first urban environmental education centers in the country, with 365 acres of fields, forests, ponds, and streams in northwest Philadelphia. The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education is a regional and national leader pioneering urban environmental education with innovative programs, the country’s most ambitious environmental art program, Philadelphia’s only wildlife clinic, Pennsylvania’s first Nature Preschool, and a commitment to stewarding our land.
SCEE welcomed TrueLove Seeds farm in 2025, which now occupies 2 acres of land that had been previously farmed by various groups but had been fallow for several years. Over the last year, TrueLove installed a deer fence, cleared overgrown vegetation, restored the hoophouse, installed irrigation, and planted many rows of annual crops including their dahlia collection, PA flax project variety trials, and much more.
“I miss the peach tree I tended in my previous work at Sayre HS and I’m so happy to be able to plant fruit trees and berries here at our new farm. It feels like a different kind of commitment to the land than was possible when we were moving every few years. It feels secure and like we’re home! Personally I’m excited to share the plant knowledge with our community, use the nanking cherry flowers for floral arrangements, and for my baby to grow up with the orchard, picking and eating fresh berries that aren’t covered in chemicals!” -Miki, TrueLove staff
Orchard Design Process
TrueLove Seeds submitted an application to POP for orchard partnership in June of 2025. POP Orchard Coordinator Hannah Thompson, who previously worked for TrueLove for six years, was assigned as the lead staff for the partnership, with Simone Shemshedini and Carolina Torres providing support for the design process. After an initial site meeting in August of 2025, TrueLove was accepted as POP’s spring 2026 planting partner and the design process was begun.
As TrueLove expressed in their application to POP, “We hope the orchard will help us teach our community about perennial agriculture including propagating and pruning trees and harvesting fruits. We envision our orchard at the bottom of our crop field at the edge of the forest, providing shade for our composting toilet, and benefiting from any runoff. We hope that we can select some perennial trees and bushes that could potentially be used for seed production, or propagating in other ways for local plant sales. First and foremost, we are excited to enjoy sweet fruits (and maybe nuts, etc!).” The orchard yields will be shared to help sustain staff and volunteers, enhance frequent potlucks, and some may be sold in support of community programs.
The POP design team visited the farm and took measurements for a basemap, locating existing structures, vegetation, slopes, etc. The newly installed perimeter deer fence served as a convenient baseline of which to take measurements. The entire site is mostly full sun, with some shade provided by existing and neighboring trees. The site slopes down from the south to the north. Much of the farm had already been prepared for row crop planting, with layers of existing weeds and vegetation largely removed. Existing structures included a hoophouse and a small storage building left from the previous farm tenants. An arbor off of the storage building had a pre-existing pair of hardy kiwi vines!
Further input was then taken from TrueLove staff on what areas of the farm made the most sense for orchard plantings and what factors should be considered for plant selection. Given the existing row crop alignment and irrigation set up, it was concluded that orchard plantings would also make the most sense in row formations. TrueLove’s mission around preservation of culturally important plants played a big role in orchard plant selection. A row for figs was desired to plant, preserve, and propagate cultivars from the Italian Garden Project initiative, relating to Owen’s own family heritage. Co-worker Miki’s heritage is represented through the inclusion of Asian pears and persimmons. Palestinian grape varieties from the West Bank were included as part of efforts to preserve endangered agricultural heritage. Indigenous Pennsylvania crops include pawpaws, blueberries, and elderberries. Pawpaws and nankings are also featured as some of very few woody orchard plants commonly grown from seed instead of grafting or vegetative propagation.
Given the extensive agricultural knowledge and strong, specific desires of the True Love team, the actual orchard design was drafted in a shared design session with the POP team. This was different from most orchard partnerships, in which POP staff incorporate input from the partner to create an initial design and then present it back to the partner for further input. Simone then drew up the final version of the design, a budget was created for the project, and a supporting grant was applied for and received from the Philadelphia Chapter of the Garden Club of America!
“I’m excited to be able to plant an orchard and have a long term home for TrueLove after 10 years as a farm tenant in multiple locations. Philadelphia has always been our home and hub but our land access had always been an hour or more outside the city. Today felt like a celebration and I’m grateful for all the community, partners, and friends that came out to plant with us! The plants I’m most personally excited about include the West Bank grapes and the legacy fig collection from the Italian Garden Project, which ties into my own heritage and family story. Each of the 7 figs we planted represents a story and a family, with each one named after a community elder who tended these heirloom trees in backyards in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and other cities. I am excited to help preserve these unique plants and share the cuttings back out with the community. I also served as a lead orchard volunteer with POP for many years at the Pentridge Children’s Garden, caring for a fig tree, so that also feels like it is coming full circle.” – Owen, TrueLove co-founder
Planting Day Summary
Planting day on Thursday, April 30 was a blast and a celebratory gathering of the TrueLove Seeds community. TrueLove staff and volunteers started the day by spreading a massive pile of mulch over the primary orchard zone. The POP team arrived in the afternoon with the plant materials, set them out in their flagged locations, and provided an orientation and planting instructions. In addition to TrueLove and POP staff, helpers included apprentices from Sankofa Farm (who help tend their own POP orchard in West Philly), students from Lankenau High School, workers from Weavers Way Coop, and new and longtime TrueLove volunteers from across the city. In all, 17 fruit trees and 18 berries and vines were planted, mulched, and watered with care, attention, and truly a whole lot of love!
“Honestly I’m most excited about these Jujube trees, which I feel are an underappreciated fruit that I look forward to turning more people on to!” – Chris, TrueLove co-founder
“I feel really connected to the fig trees we planted, as I tended them in the greenhouse, seeing them grow from cuttings incubated in bags, up-potting them, and now finally seeing them go in the ground.” -Max, TrueLove staff
“I look forward to watching these orchard plants grow alongside my own journey here at TrueLove. I’m in my first year with the farm and so are all these new perennial plants!” -Marvin, TrueLove staff
This POP Blog Post prepared by Phil Forsyth.
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