Around the world, IT is becoming increasingly popular to plant orchards within cities and towns

Fruiting trees can provide an important local source of high-quality food, particularly in low-income regions, and reduce the environmental impacts of long-distance transport of food. However, maintaining orchards in heavily populated areas poses several challenges. In particular, there needs to be sufficient insect pollinators to ensure fruiting success. We propose to evaluate pollination in tens of orchards across the city of ST. Louis, examining how factors such as human population density, socioeconomic status, soil type, and surrounding vegetation impact insect numbers and fruit yield. We will then focus on nine of these orchards to perform detailed experiments to test the effects of increasing pollinator numbers directly, by adding colonies of native bees, or indirectly, by adding blackberry stems and commercial BEE houses that they can use as nesting sites. This work represents a collaboration between four local universities, the missouri botanical garden, the saint louis ZOO, and a non-profit organization (gateway greening) established to increase urban agriculture in ST. Louis; we will involve many students in the research, and interact closely with local communities surrounding the orchards. We expect results to provide timely information on best practices to maximize the economic value of urban orchards, as well as their environmental benefits in terms of supporting local insect diversity and minimizing the ecological footprint of cities.