You just know some asshole would pick all the trees clean and go sell the fruit
Plant enough so they can’t make a profit.
it is indeed s problem if that response came from your neighbor or some other johnq on the street. 100% expected from a politician though
Obligatory:
No legal advice, but I am pretty sure picking an apple from a tree in a public space (but can be privately owned) for direct consumption is legal in Germany. Weird but understandable that you need a law for that.
Laws regarding public access to nature are much better in Europe & the UK than in the US.
If I remember correctly, Trespassing isn’t a viable law in Finland.
You want to walk across the land? Go ahead.
In the US: CRIME
I’ve been told that this is a no-go for city planners because the sheer quantity of fallen fruit can be a walking hazard, and no one wants the legal liability. What it comes down to is that “free” fruit trees would require additional ongoing maintenance costs. Nothing nefarious, just logistical issues.
Sounds like job creation to me
Agreed.
what if the trees are planted in a park, far from the road?
I’d say that’s a question for city planners.
I imagine if there were trees all over every street in town there would be a lot of mushy ass fruit swarming with flies on the ground.
It’s not a stable enough logistics chain to be viable, like, If I think “I’d like to possess a bowl of apples” I’m not going to like, patrol the streets and pick apples to that end.
Because we live in a world where everything is owned by someone and one must profit off of anything they possess or it’s considered a wasteful liability.
From a city planner view point this would never fly because it was attract insects to public spaces.
How dare we have pollinators.
Same for any flowers
If the suits who run society find out that people would get this fruit for free, they’d probably make it so that taking this fruit is considered stealing. You’d get a fine, charged with thievery because it’s property of the city.
Don’t fruit trees need extra care and pruning, and the fruit that falls to the ground is also kind of a mess to clean up. Sturdy trees are good in the city, since they are low upkeep and very good for air quality and shade. I am however a huge fan of vertical gardens with edible plants. Imagine a whole wall with mint growing on it, that would be wicked!
Date trees line the boulevards of many Mediterranean countries, and there is no issue with cleanup or rot.
Public works departments already deal with a lot of bullshit from the builder’s special trees that are already installed, managing permaculture forests would actually be easier in many ways. Portland Oregon handles this by making homeowners responsible for the sidewalk easement so they are encouraged to plant trees that don’t get too tall and don’t get too wide with their roots so the sidewalk doesn’t buckle. So you get people planting a lot of fruit trees. There is a Gleaning group there that goes and gathers ripe fruit and does stuff with it like applesauce, or there is also a cider made by Portland Cider Company with juices from gleaned fruit they get off people’s trees around town. It’s pretty good cider.
We had a lot of berry bushes at the side of the road in my hometown. Trees were often apple or Japanese cherry blossom trees. And of course the local chestnut tree made up a lot of them. Wich are also delicious. All of them bore fruit and nuts and we loved picking the stuf.
If you want to maximize production, yeah, you cut at certain times of the year to force the trees to put as much energy into the fruit as possible. But if you just leave them outside they will fruit as long as they are sufficiently watered and have enough room to grow (and it’s not insanely stressed from a drought or heat wave, etc). There might not be as many fruits, and they might be smaller, but it will produce. But ideally you always want to choose fruit or nut trees that are native to your region (or at least your agricultural zone) so that they require less upkeep in general.
I think it’s a combination of the effort required and sadly the liability too. I would imagine anyone who is saying “feel free to come eat this food” is exposing themselves to lawsuits, to some degree. The kinds of organizations who are large enough to make a big impact by deciding to grow some food on their properties are the same ones who’d be targeted by frivolous lawsuits, costing money just to defend against, and offering the orgs no tangible benefit in return.
To be clear, I don’t agree with structuring things this way and I think it’s a trash way for our society to work, but growing food in “public” places seems non-viable without addressing that big vulnerability somehow.
“God created everything for billionaires to profit from!” Duh!
Just a bafflingly dumb response to such an obviously great thing to do.
This is the result of a century of propaganda and destruction of public spaces
No you weren’t.
I mean cmon though - in a capitalist country someone would take ALL the fruit and then sell it to people. “It was public but then it became MINE and if you want it you need to enrich MY wealth with a piece of YOUR value”
Then I say we enforce the social contract of “don’t be a fucking asshole”, with force if needed.
Reminds me of a video I saw of a lady taking all the books from a “little library” someone has in front of their house. The lady thought free books to sell, but didn’t care it’s a “library” means check out books or trade books.
Same comments I got when I said I was planting apple trees in my front yard. Those are for the public, the ones in my back yard are for me.
Everyone in my street is selling their apples on the street. Every house has a little basket and a sign “1 kilo 1 euro” or something like that. Some are even giving them away for free. I gave mine away in bulk, so I haven’t got anything to pu in the street.
I remember when I was young I got ticketed for trespassing on public property. I was so offended. Yet that’s the society we live in. Public resources aren’t for use by the public, they are for use by the small fraction of the public who control them.
We’re gonna need the detail. The county jail is public property, but you can’t waltz in and say hi to the inmates.
It was for staying too late in a public park. It was meant to be closed after dark. I overstayed by like an hour.
I think there’s a big difference between breaking and entering and trespassing. Going into a restricted area is more like the latter. Although there’s the whole ethics of a prison to consider as well but I don’t want to get into that.
But yes there may be a small number of situations where public access should be forbidden but right now that’s a minority of all of the completely unnecessary restrictions that exist.
So you were there when it wasn’t public property, legally speaking.
In this case, they mean “public property” as in it’s the property of the public. It’s owned by the government, by the tax payers.
You’re thinking public or state ownership. Public property is property generally meant to be used by the public. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t conditions to that use though, like hours of operation.
Most of this is in that article you linked…
You’re buzzing around the point like a fly on shit
Property generally meant to be used by the public is “open to the public,” not public property. The grocery store is open to the public, but it is not public property, it’s private property.
But why should a public park have hours of operation? Benches and open space don’t stop working after certain hours, don’t take resources or workers to operate, they’re just there. Why should we punish people for enjoying the outdoors?
Swing through Washington square park at 2 in the morning, better still if you can do it 20 years ago
