A community orchard plants fruit and nut trees on shared public land, with the resulting harvest available freely to anyone in the area rather than being sold or restricted to a specific group, treating food production as a genuinely shared community resource rather than private, individual property.
The trees themselves require relatively little ongoing effort once established, particularly compared to an annual vegetable garden, which makes an orchard a comparatively low-maintenance way to build a long-term food resource that keeps producing for decades once the initial planting and early establishment work is done.
Beyond the fruit itself, a community orchard tends to become a small local landmark, a place people walk to specifically, check on through the seasons, and gather around informally, which gives a neighbourhood a shared point of reference that has nothing to do with commerce at all. The pattern tends to become visible only in hindsight, once enough time has genuinely passed.