Fruit for the people!

One of the things I love about California is that you can grow pretty much anything here. I don’t own a patch of dirt, but I’ve got a patio with potted fig, mandarin, lemon, and avocado trees. The yield isn’t spectacular, but I still love it. In fact, if I had my way, we wouldn’t plant anything but fruit bearing trees in our public spaces. Why do we bother planting and watering park trees that don’t produce anything? Fruit for the people!

Village Harvest is a group doing some great things. They get neighbors and community organizations to provide food for the hungry by harvesting extra fruit. The California Report did a great story on them:

A Backyard Bounty – California is celebrated for its bountiful produce. Residents love the fresh fruit the growing climate provides. But there is another side to it for some homeowners, like rotting plums on the driveway and smashed oranges on the lawn. How do you keep up with the bounty? In the Santa Clara Valley, homeowners can fall back on some unique help.

Fallen Fruit has a more guerrilla approach, but I still love the idea:

“Public Fruit” is the concept behind the Fallen Fruit, an activist art project which started as a mapping of all the public fruit in our neighborhood. We ask all of you to contribute your maps so they expand to cover the United States and then the world. We encourage everyone to harvest, plant and sample public fruit, which is what we call all fruit on or overhanging public spaces such as sidewalks, streets or parking lots.

We believe fruit is a resource that should be commonly shared, like shells from the beach or mushrooms from the forest. Fallen Fruit has moved from mapping to planning fruit parks in under-utilized areas. Our 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.