By Isabella Bullock ’19

It’s apple season and there are apple trees in the courtyard that many staples students are eating from.
According to Michael Aitkenhead, the advisor of The Green Club and a horticulture teacher, the trees were planted at Staples about 10 years ago, when Bridgeport’s Green Village Initiative donated fruit trees to the school.
“They [Green Village Initiative] were involved in purchasing and getting the Staples garden installed,” Aitkenhead said. “As an additional project, they got their hands on some fruit trees and got the approval to plant them in the courtyard.”
Green Village Initiative wanted students to be able to pick fresh, organic fruit in a comfortable and beautiful environment. “The apples and so forth have grown pretty well, and kids have been eating them and it serves its purpose over the years,” Aitkenhead said.
The trees are tended by The Green Club, a club whose motive is to create a better environment. Last year the club took it upon themselves to clean up the courtyard and the plant life in the area. “We wanted to take care of it ourselves instead of seeing it grow out and become unkempt,” Georgina Nelson ’19 said.
The club’s services are utilized whenever the courtyard is in need of trimming. “We needed [the courtyard] clean for graduation,” Karen Romano, the Secretary to the Principal said when recalling the last time The Green Club tended to the trees.
Aitkenhead brought his horticulture class to prune and tend the trees in order to keep them alive and continue to produce fruit.
Some students have even eaten the apples. “The apples were really good,” Dean Morrow ’21 said. “They tasted fresh.”