What is a tree for in the city?
From municipal offices, surely many would argue that trees have many reasons for existing: they fight climate change, provide shade in the heatwave and shelter from the occasional downpour.
They allow the urban fabric to be oxygenated and create spaces for relaxation and calm for the pedestrian stressed out between so much cement and asphalt.
Without forgetting that they are also decorative objects.
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Citizen, grow your food ... in the public park
Green from my window
The edible city
For some time now, more and more people and social movements have argued that urban nature is there above all for another reason: to eat it, and more so in troubled times like those in which we live.
And that it is no longer only municipal offices who can and should decide on citizen vegetables.
Whose parterre in the public park is it?
Who decides and based on what criteria about the next urban plantations?
We spoke a few months ago about the Masked Gardeners, who have set out to reclaim vacant land in my small town in France and in other French cities also without permission from anyone but without anyone blocking their way either.
It is the same spirit that drives the
Guerrilla Grafters
, a movement that emerged in San Francisco (USA) in 2012 with the aim of encouraging anonymous people to graft branches of fruit trees onto other trees that are also fruit trees but only ornamental, that is to say, no bear fruit.
And thus to achieve that, branch by branch, in the end the city produces a lot of healthy food, free fruit and accessible to all.
According to their website, they aim to turn cities into “food forests” and “disarm capitalist civilization from branch to branch”.
They aim to turn cities into "food forests"
In fact,
branch graftsmen
operate in San Francisco and its bay on the sly, often at night.
And it is that the city has prohibited fruit trees to avoid attracting animals or dirtying the sidewalks even more, and also to avoid the judicial processes that could derive from all this.
The forest mass of the city is therefore made up of ornamental trees and perhaps fruit trees but in any case sterile.
The story took a tumble in 2012 thanks to the individual initiative of a woman, Tara Hui, who originally wanted to plant some pear, cherry and other fruit trees to provide some free fresh fruit in her popular neighborhood, where there were no shops. of food.
It was explained at the time by the
Los Angeles Times
, who titled the story "a secret project bears fruit."
I don't think that Tara Hui could imagine eight years ago that the fruit of her little seed would reach this far in time and space.
Hui and all his followers do not want to make public where they intervene for fear of reprisals from local officials, who do not welcome the violation of the law even if the transgressors have good intentions at heart.
Despite the local persecution, they have received applause abroad: the
Guerrilla grafters
participated, for example, in the 13th Venice Biennale as part of the US pavilion.
Movement persecuted at home and praised outside: they participated in a Venice Biennale Macu Ic via Unsplash
And according to their Facebook page, in recent months several people from France contacted them asking to translate their material.
And that is why the movement is recently landing in France thanks to the French translation of the text that explains how to perform the aforementioned graft operation.
