A Grower and a Tech Pioneer: A Santa Clara Valley Friendship

Modern Silicon Valley may not feel it has a lot in common with Santa Clara Valley's recent agricultural past. But many friendships blossomed in the orchards. Ask Charlie Olson of Sunnyvale's Orchard Heritage Park. He will tell you.

It wasn't very long ago that tech visionaries like Steve Jobs and David Packard were cultivating their own apricot orchards in the Santa Clara Valley. Before Jobs died, he finalized plans for the new Apple campus in Cupertino and decreed it be surrounded by fruit trees of all kinds. Packard, of Hewlett Packard fame, had his own orchard in Los Altos Hills--sixty acres of apricot trees, now cultivated by his foundation.

Edible Silicon Valley: A Story on Silicon Valley's Orchardists

Andy Mariani still tends to his apricot, peach, cherry and plum orchards in Morgan Hill, California. But the transformation from rural to urban has changed the way all local growers do their work. This wonderful photo is by Los Altan Yvonne Cornell for Edible Silicon Valley Magazine.

I first got to know grower Andy Mariani, along with local orchard legends Deborah Olson and her father Charles, when I was working on my book California Apricots: the Lost Orchards of Silicon Valley for the History Press in 2012. Knowing them, and meeting the orchardist at the National Trust home Filoli in Woodside, California, came in handy when Edible Silicon Valley magazine came calling.

My friend Catherine Nunes is the publisher of Edible Silicon Valley and she asked for a story on how orchardists were re-imagining their businesses in the changing environment of our booming region.