Replanting Martin Van Buren's Orchard at Lindenwald

Staff and volunteers planting apple and pear trees in the historic orchard, April 2024. NPS.

In the first week of April 2024, staff from Martin Van Buren National Historic Site, Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Site and the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation worked with volunteers to plant 81 apple and pear trees in the three-acre north orchard at Lindenwald, Van Buren's estate. The planting capped years of planning. When planting is finished the following spring, 136 fruit trees will grow there.

The north woodlot and non-historic maintenance building in 2016. NPS / OCLP.

The project is also an example of the National Park Service working with a Tribal Historic Preservation Office through design and compliance.

Van Buren the farmer

Martin Van Buren bought Lindenwald, in eastern New York, while serving as the eighth president. After his term ended in 1841 he moved there, stayed active in national politics, and took up progressive agriculture as an extension of his politics. Opposing the spread of slavery into the western territories, he used his farm to show that northern soil was not "spent" and could be worked profitably without enslaved labor. His 1848 run for president as the Free Soil Party's candidate failed, but he kept promoting and practicing progressive farming for the rest of his life.

Early in Van Buren's time at Lindenwald, his workers planted apple and pear trees by the thousand in orchards northwest and southwest of the mansion. The north orchard appears in an 1841 sketch map and a July 1843 deed, and letters mention the trees too — one suggests Van Buren may have propagated and sold fruit trees on a fairly large scale.

The c. 1841 sketch map of Lindenwald. By the mid-1840s the north orchard had grown to take in part of the former north field, labeled "rye fields" on the sketch and shaded red at bottom right. Original in the Van Buren Papers, Pennsylvania State University; NPS / Martin Van Buren National Historic Site.

Growing apples on this scale was unusual in his day. Fruit later became the main farming activity around Kinderhook, but commercial fruit growing was only beginning in the 1840s. Named varieties were grafted onto standard rootstock; trees were set in regular grids 20 to 35 feet apart, grafted close to the ground, and left to spread wide on tall trunks without pruned canopies.

No one knows exactly what Van Buren grew. Given his ties to city markets and his interest in horticulture, he probably grew popular commercial apples of the time, such as Newtown Pippin and Esopus Spitzenburg — among the first apples sold in New York City — or Baldwins. His pears may have included Seckel, an American variety developed near Philadelphia, and varieties imported from Germany.

Newtown Pippin, one of the common apple varieties likely grown in the historic orchard. Ellen Isham Schutt, USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection.

From woodlot back to orchard

The orchards survived until the mid-1900s, when woodland gradually took over the northern one.

Aerial view looking west, 1978. The woodlot to the right of the mansion grew up where the orchard had been. NPS / MAVA Archives, 78-2801.

The national historic site was established in 1974, and from the 1990s the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation advised the park on managing its landscape. A 1997 Cultural Landscape Report recommended re-establishing the north orchard, as did a 2016 updated treatment plan, but the work sat on hold for almost 25 years. In 2019 the park took it up again and sought funding.

Two concerns guided the team: protecting archeological resources and managing the orchard sustainably. The park has a strong working relationship with the Tribal Historic Preservation Program of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, whose traditional homeland includes the Hudson River Valley. Before planning began, the park worked closely with the Mohican Tribal Historic Preservation Officer to understand the tribe's views on disturbing soil and collecting artifacts, and to make sure the orchard would not harm artifacts of their heritage.

The archeology crew scanning the site with ground-penetrating radar, late September 2023. NPS.

Designing a new old orchard

The aim was a sustainable, historically authentic orchard, planted with as little ground disturbance as possible. It is not an exact replica: replanting Van Buren's full orchard in a changing climate would not be sustainable. Instead it echoes his enthusiasm for the best farming practice of his time.

A view of the replanted orchard from the house at Lindenwald, where Martin Van Buren lived from 1841 until 1862 (April 2024). NPS.

• Layout: trees stand on a 30-foot grid, mimicking Van Buren's spacing. The number of trees and the orchard's size and shape were adjusted to protect archeology and follow modern organic practice.
• Varieties: the exact historic cultivars are unknown, so the park chose ones representative of those grown in the Hudson River Valley in the mid-1800s, with a few exceptions to spread the harvest.
• Rootstock: Geneva series 890 ¾-size clonal rootstock resists disease and pests and produces trees nearly as large as historic ones, which would have grown on full-size seedling rootstock.
• Planting in mounds: in 2022, while writing the orchard rehabilitation plan, the park consulted stakeholders and local orchardists. Farmscape Ecology, a local research and education program, introduced two experienced growers, and the orchardists at Threshold Farm in Philmont, New York, suggested hügelkultur — a historic technique of planting in mounds — to avoid digging. A local orchard expert was hired to guide the process.

In late October 2023, the soil mounds are in place and cover crop is growing to prepare the site for planting. Trees will be spaced in a grid that reflects the historic conditions. Note the same maintenance building in the 2016 image of the woodlot. The building has since been removed. NPS.

The hardest part was writing planting specifications that kept soil disturbance under two inches, as the consultation and the archeologists recommended. Young trees are planted into mounds and staked — a highly unusual practice that will be monitored as an experiment. The deer fence's post locations were set using GIS and archeology layers to avoid sensitive spots, and the irrigation system was designed the same way.

Mounded planting detail for setting a bare-root tree with minimal soil disturbance. NPS / Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation.

The schedule

The orchard planting group at Martin Van Buren National Historic Site on April 2, 2024. NPS.

A plastic pool with the bottom removed was used to form soil mounds for the orchard planting, October 24 2023. NPS.

The rehabilitated orchard in April 2024. NPS.

The park hopes the orchard will give visitors and volunteers more ways to engage with the site's farming history.

Sources

• National Park Service: "Orchard Project at Martin Van Buren National Historic Site."
• The source gives two different months for forming the soil mounds (October 2023 in photo captions, November 2023 in its schedule), so this page gives neither. It describes Van Buren's planting as "several thousand" trees in one place and 2,000 in another; this page gives no exact count. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.