Every rabid gardener has a weakness. For me, these days, it’s fruit trees.

Heirloom apples, cold-hardy peaches, apricots, persimmons. With each passing year, they grow stronger, more abundant and tastier fruit. As they age, their gnarly, graceful forms become all the better for climbing (for little hands to reach the fruits hanging from their boughs.)

I’m convinced: Fruit trees can save the world.

Not only are they perennially beautiful—think of cherry and apple blossoms in springtime—but they cast shade, offer habitat and provide fruit for the families who grow them. While they’re at it, according to the Center for Urban Forest Research, the average backyard tree absorbs about 330 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, according to the USDA, about 260 pounds of oxygen each year.

So, I was giddy with excitement when I heard about a program by the Stretch Island Fruit Co. and The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, a wonderful nonprofit that plants edible fruit trees and plants to benefit communities and heal the earth. Their Fruit Tree 101 project will bring fruit tree orchards to about 17 new schools in nine cities nationwide.

Kids learn that fruit is good to eat and good for the earth. In 2008, the team planted some 1,000 fruit trees and shrubs at 24 schools across the country. This year, you can nominate your child’s school to receive a special school yard planting; if you win, you’ll earn a  a fruit tree of your own, too.

I know what a gift this can be. My son’s kindergarten play yard is ringed by an old apple orchard. In spring, the twisted trees scatter their pink blossoms like confetti. In summer, they offer shade from the searing sun.

Come fall, their red fruit comes on and ripens until its so heavy with juice it falls into open hands and future pies. And in winter, the same trees serve as sturdy playmates—and quiet reminders that it will all come back to life before long.

Resources—like how to plant, prune and care for new fruit trees—abound on the Foundation’s site. But my favorite gift of all is their “required reading,” The Man Who Planted Trees, by Jean Giono. (I plan to print and read it to my little ones at bedtime today.) It’s the story of a shepherd-turned-beekeeper named Elezeard Bouffier, who planted trees across a once barren region of the French Alps for more than 50 years. And it positively blooms with hope…

“On the site of ruins I had seen in 1913 now stand neat farms, cleanly plastered, testifying to a happy and comfortable life. The old streams, fed by the rains and snows that the forest conserves, are flowing again. Their waters have been channeled. On each farm, in groves of maples, fountain, pools overflow on to carpets of fresh mint. Little by little the villages have been rebuilt. People from the plains, where land is costly, have settled here, bringing youth, motion, the spirit of adventure. Along the roads you meet hearty men and women, boys and girls who understand laughter and have recovered a taste for picnics. … When I reflect that one man, armed only with his own physical and moral resources, was able to cause this land of Canaan to spring from the wasteland, I am convinced that in spite of everything, humanity is admirable.”

Enjoy the fruits of your labors this Earth Day.