The loss of knowledge and the missing possibilities to gain an adequate and comprehensive education in all aspects of care and management of traditional orchards is the main motivation for our initiative. One decisive point is to guarantee a close cooperation of practice-orientated and theory-orientated partners. It addresses vocational education institutions, adult education (layman, private garden owners, farmers, etc.) and students (e.g. agriculture, ecology, biology etc.).Designated Focus Groups will elaborate a trans-national curriculum based on their specific expertise from sectors like pomology, care and management of traditional orchards, fruit processing, marketing of traditional orchards and their products ensuring a participatory approach, and contributing to further exploitation of results, during and after the project. For testing and evaluating the new e-learning tool Online Orchard Schools will be initiated to gain methodical and pedagogical remarks for specific target groups, before launching the final curriculum. Dissemination will be ensured, through a projects website, respective National Competence Centre, media relationships, and different dissemination products in respective partner country’s languages. Finally, the objective of this project will be the exploitation of the curriculum within the EU-wide consortium network.Central impacts of the ESTO-project are to build up a trans-national curriculum and offering a) an e-learning system for different educational levels (ECVET-based), b) developing a continuous system for the use of traditional orchards and products, c) assuring the economical and ecological functions of the orchards (by teaching ecological background and integration of all steps of production, processing & marketing), d) maintenance of orchards as a base for healthy regional food and e) offering expert skills for labour market in rural areas.