About the Tour

Since 2004, the Fruit Tree Tour Program has directly impacted 80,000 students, transformed over 180 low income schools and community centers into abundant orchards with the planting of over 4,300 fruit trees.

Every year 20-30 volunteers board the world's largest vegetable oil powered caravan on a 2.5 month mission to change the urban landscapes of California.

School Programs

20-educators and performing artists from Common Vision will arrive at a school in vegetable-oil powered buses to deliver a program that includes

• A 40-min Theater assembly that weaves colorful stories, larger than life puppets, a live band, and relevant, engaging environmental education
• Planting 15-30 fruit trees in the schoolyard with the students.  Varieties are numerous and school-year fruiting
• Dynamic 45-minute arts workshops that focus on articulating vision and goals through words,  visual arts, and the painting of orchard signs
• Fruit tree care workshop for teachers, parents, community members, groundskeepers, and sometimes students.
• Installation of drip irrigation for the orchard
• A day that the teachers and students will never forget!

> More on the School Programs

Community Events

> More on Community Planting

Food Justice

Planting fruit trees in schoolyards is not just a happy-go-lucky affair.  Low income communities across our nation experience a lack of access and media-cultural support for healthy eating causing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes.   Fruit grown in the schoolyard provides health, organic, delicious snacks that are making a difference in the eating choices of thousands of students each year.

Arts-Infused Education

Fruit Tree Tour seeks not just to plant trees in schoolyards but to inspire a whole generation to care for the health of themselves, their communities, and this great planet.  Music, theatre, and visual arts move the minds and hearts of students and staff and help create an experience that they will never forget.  

Kids Learn Clean Energy

Do you think modelling solar power and recycled vegetable oil fuel to tens of thousands of students every year is important?  We do.