Fallen Fruit, Los Angeles

[Hettie Judah]

Hi Everyone

At the meeting last week I mentioned the work of the LA arts collective Fallen Fruit - the group started off making maps of publicly accessible fruit trees in their neighborhood, and since then have expanded into other actions including public jam making and fruit swaps. I love what they do, and I think it would be great to do a map of public fruit in out neighborhood.

This is the map that they did of their local area. They've been invited to do maps in Denmark and Austria, so it's clearly not just an idea that works in sunny California!

They also encourage people to adopt and nurture public fruit trees - something that might be worth thinking about for us too.

Here's their link - hope you enjoy it!

http://www.fallenfruit.org/

See you on Sunday in Queen's Park.

Hettie

[Michael Stuart]

Thanks very much for the offer to pick on Saturday. I'm going to the National Fruit Collection in Kent that day. We are picking Sunday at 11am if you're free then and in any case hopefully we'll say hello at the Transition stall in the afternoon. We have picked figs, mulberries, cherries and grapes! this is my emai: [e-mail]

[Hettie Judah]

Hi Michael
550 kilos is an amazing figure!
I like the way they did it on the map above with the different colours - I was walking around the old WIllesden graveyard this afternoon thinking of all the species you'd want on a london map: apples, pears, plums, blackberries, crab apples, mulberries, sweet chestnut, walnut, cob nut, cherry (sour and sweet), elderberries, rosehips,sloes, fig (optimistic...), grapes (still optimistic!), ginko (we used to have on our street in the US) - I'd love to provide people with prompts on Sunday - give them the list of varieties and ask them to show us where they are in the area.
I'll see you on Sunday - unless you need to do picking on Saturday, in which case we can help out, for sure.
Hettie

[Michael Stuart]

Picking public fruit is great. We've picked two street trees so far this year, in Douglas Road and All Souls Avenue and. the public reaction is good fun. The total of all fruit picked by 10th September is 550kg. You can taste it, juiced, at Queens Park day. Please email me if you want to help pick or organise fruit picking . We dont currently have a visual map, I have a list of 40+ trees in all types of location. Michael - [e-mail]