A Fruitful Harvest
Growing community and creating a local, public
food supply by gleaning
by Wendy Priesnitz
 Imagine a city or town where apples, pears, nuts, oranges,
cherries and berries line the streets, create welcome shade in parking lots and
parks and provide free food for anyone who cares to pick it. Instead, most urban
areas are planted with sad shrubs, neglected “ornamental” non-native trees that
require too much water and bedraggled annual flowers planted in regimented
rows.
Visionary groups and individuals around the world have found
ways to combine the local food movement with beautifying neighborhoods, while
building community and feeding themselves at the same time.
The idea of “public fruit” is what propels a project in Los
Angeles that was begun as an activist art project called Fallen Fruit. Artists
David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young mapped the public fruit – which
they define as fruit in or overhanging public spaces such as sidewalks, streets
or parking lots – in their neighborhood. According to California law, if a fruit
tree grows on or over public property, the fruit is no longer the sole property
of the owner of the tree, which makes free food available year round in LA
without trespassing on private property...providing one knows where to find it.
While public fruit might not be a four-season phenomenon in other areas, Fallen
Fruit has a vision of expanding the maps around the world, and provides tools on
its website for learning how to map public fruit.
The group believes that fruit is a resource that should be
commonly shared, like mushrooms from the forest. So it has moved from mapping to
planning fruit parks in under-utilized areas and encouraging municipalities and
urban planning groups to replace ornamentals with edible species to be shared by
all citizens, similar to the communal gardens in many cities that provide food
for poor families. The goal is to get people thinking about the life and
vitality of our neighborhoods and to consider how we can change the dynamic of
our cities and common values.
They also offer a Public Fruit Jam, where residents bring their
own fruit and jars and learn the art of making jam. Fallen Fruit has only a few
rules: “Take only what you need, say ‘hi’ to strangers, share, take a friend and
go by foot.”
Common Vision is another southern California organization that
believes in creating safe local food supplies through urban fruit plantings.
Earlier this Spring, traveling in what they called the “world’s largest
veggie-oil powered caravan,” 27 volunteers planted 1,000 fruit trees on their
fourth annual 20-city, 70-day tour to urban schools from San Diego to
Sacramento.
In a one-of-a-kind day-long interactive outdoor program that
includes West African agricultural drumming and eco-conscious hip-hop, Common
Vision’s Fruit Tree Tour teaches inner city students how to turn barren school
yards into abundant orchards, using Permaculture principles to create living
classrooms with the potential to produce enough fresh fruit for the a school’s
cafeteria and for members of the school’s community.
Each year the tour visits first-time schools to plant new fruit
trees while returning to old school orchards to start new initiatives like Roots
to Fruits: School Nurseries to Feed Communities, a grafting program, and Harvest
Hip Hop, a roots-rhythm rap contest.
|
Visionary groups and individuals around the world have found
ways to combine the local food movement with beautifying neighborhoods, while
building community and feeding themselves at the same time. |
Founded in 1999, Common Vision is a solution-focused nonprofit
organization, a project of the International Humanities Center. Its mission is
to cultivate ecological awareness and respect for the Earth while generating
social and environmental changes towards sustainable lifestyles.
Common Vision participates in another LA initiative called Fruit
Trees to Combat Hunger, run by TreePeople, which has been planting trees in Los
Angeles for over 25 years.
Urban orchards planted for community development purposes are
growing in many other areas. In Boston, Massachusetts and neighboring areas, an
organization called EarthWorks has been working towards a healthier and more
sustainable local environment since 1990. Its Urban Orchards project is a
greening and food production program that operates with local groups to plant,
maintain and harvest fruit- and nut-bearing trees, shrubs and vines on public
land. There are now close to 1,000 trees in almost 50 urban orchards and the
organization publishes the Urban Fruit Guide, which lists publicly accessible
fruit, nuts and berries – not only in its orchards but at all publicly
accessible sites in Greater Boston – and provides growing and harvesting tips.
Not everyone lives in a place where there are public orchards or
where it’s legal to pick fruit growing on or overhanging public property. So
some so-called “guerilla gardeners” have taken to cleaning up and planting
gardens on neglected public or private (often commercially- owned) property.
Guerilla gardeners run the gamut from anarchists fighting corporate domination
of space and food supplies to local gardening groups seeking to beautify their
neighborhoods. And many of them will use whatever seeds or plants they can find
or get donated, oblivious to their food value or compatibility with the
environment in which they will be growing. Toronto (“we vandalize the city with
nature”) and London, England have thriving but ever-morphing guerilla gardening
groups that do encourage native plants and sometimes cultivate herbs and the odd
tomato seedling. However, the movement has its roots firmly planted in urban
food production.
Many in the movement trace the guerilla gardening term to New
York City in 1973 when Liz Christy reclaimed a patch of land to grow a community
garden that is still going strong. And yes, it contains fruit trees. The
organization that resulted, called Green Guerillas, now uses a unique mix of
education, organizing and advocacy to help people cultivate community gardens,
sustain grassroots groups and coalitions, engage youth, paint colorful murals
and address issues critical to the future of their gardens.
Working with fruit grown on private rather than public property
is the focus of a community-based, registered charity in Vancouver, British
Columbia. The eight-year-old Vancouver Fruit Tree Project connects people who
have fruit trees, people who can help harvest fruit and community groups that
use fruit in their programs. Last year, they distributed over 4,000 pounds of
fruit to nine community partners, which, in turn, ensured that the fruit fed
children, families and youth across Vancouver who would otherwise not have
access to fresh fruit.
Their idea is simple: building communities and strengthen food
security using local backyard fruit. The Vancouver Fruit Tree Project also
partners with Community Kitchens to offer canning workshops to develop skills
which are being lost in our urban environment.
Indeed, this productive urban fruit tree movement has many
benefits. Fruit- and nut-bearing trees afford the same benefits as other urban
trees: Aside from providing an abundant supply of locally-grown, chemical-free
food, they provide beauty, shade in the summer, a nearby relief to carbon-based
pollution and proximity to nature. That’s not bad for what was often under-used,
abused or even forgotten space.
Wendy Priesnitz is the Editor of Natural Life Magazine and a
journalist with over 40 years of experience. She has also authored
13 books. Visit her
website.
This article was published in Natural
Life Magazine in 2007.
| 
