Urban
trees can be beautiful and a hazard
Apparently up to 80% 0f the population have never used a road map
when traveling in the car. Satellite navigation became popular in the nineties
and it looks as though there are a lot of younger drivers on the road who
started with a clunky screen on their dashboard and have progressed to using
their phone to find a destination.
I’m one of those
people that ‘progressed’ from the Collins road atlas straight to a phone and as
handy as it can be they are not perfect (some say it’s me but I am in denial)
Last week I headed down to Enniskillen and set the map to my location before
setting off. The default setting is to
take the fastest route and what a route I went. I was taken down onto tiny
single track roads more suitable for tractors. If my phone battery went I would
probably still be there trying to miss the potholes. Without the navigation taking me off the
beaten tracks I’m sure I wouldn’t have seen as many beautiful autumn tree
colours. Farmers along the route have done a wonderful job of planting colourful
native and non-native trees along the roads and fields. A real joy to behold.
Guerrilla Grafting
Planting trees doesn’t always get a seal of approval though.
Every year in urban areas the councils are usually inundated with complaints
about fallen leaves causing a hazard , either by clogging up gutters or being
slippery. In contrast there is a group
who thinks that urban trees are a really underused source of food and like
guerrilla gardeners who go around planting vegetables in city centre roundabouts
and throwing seed bombs, they are heading out and grafting fruit stock onto ornamental
tree branches.
The group of fruit lovers in San Francisco call it
“guerrilla grafting” they graft fruit bearing branches onto fruitless,
ornamental trees.
In many built up areas, councils make sure that flowering
fruit trees don’t bear any fruit, in order to keep fallen fruit from making a
mess on pavements and attracting vermin. Most public trees are fruitless, a
fact that the Guerrilla Grafters obviously don’t like. While authorities see
urban fruit-bearing trees as a nuisance, these agricultural rebels see them as
an opportunity to provide fresh, healthy produce for free to anyone who walks
by.
Noble Gesture
One member on their facebook page tells us “Guerrilla Grafters
is a grassroots group that sees a missed opportunity for cities to provide a
peach or a pear to anyone strolling by. Their objective is to restore sterile
city trees into fruit-bearers by grafting branches from fertile trees. The
project may not resolve food scarcity, but it helps foster a habitat that
sustains us.” Their mission, they say is to make delicious, nutritious fruit
available to urban residents through these grafts.
It is a noble gesture but guerrilla grafting is illegal and
classified as vandalism by San Francisco’s Department of Public Works, but unless
someone is caught in the act, there’s not much the police can do. Apparently it is hard to catch anyone because it’s
hard to know what an illegal graft looks like; maybe it’ll be like a fingerprint
in future as everyone will develop a particular style.
However, some people seem to think guerrilla grafting is a
very serious problem. “It gets very dangerous very quickly,” said Carla Short,
an urban forester for the San Francisco Department of Public Works. “I mean the
minute that fruit gets crushed on the sidewalk, it is slippery. We certainly
don’t want people to get injured.”
The intention of doing guerrilla grafting is, says a member,
not so much for the sake of challenging authority, but to set a working
example. Plus they promise, every grafted tree has a steward, someone who
promises to check up on it regularly, making sure it doesn’t cause any
problems. How this will pan out on a legal basis is yet to be decided. Does a
‘steward’ have a legal obligation and what if someone put in a claim against
them?
Many fruit lovers in California do try “legal channels” One
member wanted to plant a fruit tree in front of her house and was fully
prepared to care for it herself. But her efforts were repeatedly thwarted by
the department and by San Francisco non-profit Friends of the Urban Forest. So
she began connecting with other frustrated residents who wanted fruit trees and
they started using social media to delve into underground channels.
Movement member Tara Hui says “The hope is that through this
one small act (of grafting) we can reconnect with a shared space and reconnect
with each other.” Ultimately, I think codes and regulations should respond to
the reality of people’s lives. Just taking an evening stroll, and then you see
a fruit and you reach over and now you’re nourished.” Unless of course you slip
up on it covering your clothes with ripe fruit and get stung by wasps. In a lot
of towns, pavement slabs are taken up and replaced with asphalt because of
insurance claims, so I can’t see many ‘grafters’ around here just yet.
