To the Editor:

One of the gems and treasured features of the Victory Garden are the many fruit trees donated and planted by a Minnesota agricultural college in memory of the Sandy Hook shooting victims. The problem with fruit trees over the years is they take a lot of care! Our dedicated garden volunteers who work so hard taking care of and harvesting their rows for our food pantries often have little time left to properly tend to the trees. That’s why this past Saturday’s fruit tree pruning workshop was so important. I think(and hope) everyone who came to learn and help prune the trees will now be invested in their well-being and continue to help keep the trees healthy and productive.

Making all this possible was the visionary founder of the garden, Harvey Pessin. Although he is no longer involved with the day-to-day running of the Garden, he continues to be its strongest advocate and is always available to us for help and guidance. We also thank the amazing Dan Dalton for his generosity of time in teaching us some of the fine arts of fruit tree pruning — it was not only educational but a heck of a lot of fun.

Under his guidance, every tree was pruned to near perfection and we had a lot of laughs in the process.

Thank you both for all you do.

Gail Friedman

43 Button Shop Road, Newtown          February 25, 2019