Does your city’s Parks department plant fruit trees and bushes? Why not? I’m sending this question to Toronto Parks and Recreation.

Reasons against:

• more clean-up required (from fallen decayed fruit) – unless we let the fruit rot on the ground. Also, are fruit trees more susceptible to disease, requiring applications of (organic/safe) sprays?
  A: Perhaps they shouldn’t be everywhere, but they could be in most public spaces, no?
• liability issues – poison could be injected into the fruit while it’s on the tree.
  A: Yes, that’s a problem.
• The availability of free food would increase the number of vagrants.
  A: It could be said that picking fruit does require work, and exercise, and being outdoors – it’s much healthier for individuals and the whole economy than getting groceries from stores.

Fallen Fruit is an activist art project founded in Los Angeles to promote “public fruit” – the idea that we should promote and make common use of “all fruit on or overhanging public spaces such as sidewalks, streets or parking lots.”

“A specter is haunting our cities: barren landscapes with foiliage and flowers, but nothing to eat.” The mapping section features tips for drafting maps of your own neighbourhood’s public fruit.

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Categories: Eco-Development
Tags » Community | Ecology | economics | Garden

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