Urban Orchards
Create urban orchards in every neighbourhood ( cherry, apple, fig, berries, plums, apricots and peaches). Employ staff to maintain these and to teach people how to preserve and use the harvest. Graft producing branches to existing cherry, plum, apple root stock.
Clelie
shared this idea
Small orchards are being planted by the Park Board in golf courses and at Sunset. Plans are in the works for more community orchards. This is a strategy in the draft Greenest City Action Plan.
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NOTE: Melaney's idea "boulevards" has been merged with this one.
Plant FRUIT Trees on boulevards...
apple, pear, plum trees that produce edible produce as well as being decorative. Allowing the community to share in the harvest. -
Note: Kajin's idea "GROW FRUIT TREES IN PARKS, UNDER-USED SPACES AND SIDEWALKS, WHICH ARE FREE FOR PUBLIC HARVESTING" has been merged with this one.
FYI, there's already a 'Plant edibles' Idea which this can merge with. But I thought re-titling might draw some fresh attention to this possibility of transforming the whole city of Vancouver into city-wide urban fruit garden.
It sounds dreamy (it is) but it is do-able. Let's imagine both the possibilities, and the benefits.
First, the proposal in greater detail:
1. We initiate the program by first bringing together the parks board, city workers, residents, gardeners, organic farmers, horticulturalists, community organizers urban planners etc. to examine feasability, method, time-scale, strategy etc.
2. Maybe this can become a pilot program of picking one street or neighbourhood to start with, with considerations of picking varieties of fruit trees to plant, and whether there’ll be any issues around litter/hygiene etc.
3. Taking what’s learned from the pilot, different neighbourhoods can start to nominate themselves or be nominated for this growing program.
4. Education program: field trips (maybe just outside the schoolgate, or within) where kids, high-schoolers can learn about fruit tree systems - harvesting, growth cycles, seeding, grafting, harvesting, reproduction, ecology (links to other flora + fauna)
Am presently writing this at the Greenest City Pitch Event. Will post now and see what happens!
Kajin
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@Kajin, I love that you wrote this idea at the ideas slam event! It's a great idea and similar to the Urban Orchards idea. I'm going to merge the two to keep votes and comments in the same spot.
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Anonymous
commented
Plant edible fruit trees on the boulivards. There is 1 block of apple trees near Knight St. that I collect and preserve into apple sauce, apple pie filling and pancake topping to eat all year round.
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Local Food Working Group
commented
@Clelie - Definitely something that we want to try and do more of. There are a few community orchards that are in place (Burrard and 6th being one), but we want to try and increase the number of these where possible.
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Steven Forth
commented
A lovely idea, and it would also help to grow communities and community values and help people to meet each other. The traffic circles are already starting to do this. This will be a 'commons' and it will be a good experiment to see if Vancouver can grow a set of community values that allows us to govern the commons together.