Lifestyle

These Folks Want to Create Public Urban Fruit Trails All Over Los Angeles

January 9, 2016 by Brian Champlin

Fallen Fruit is a collaborative art project that began in Los Angeles over 10 years ago by making maps of public fruit, i.e. the fruit that grows on or over public property available for anyone to pick and consume. That project lead to public art installations, site- and public engagement events, all which aimed to bring the community together and a bit closer to their natural environment.

Now two of the original creators of Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young) want to build something new they call “The Endless Orchard.”

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The Endless Orchard aspires to be “a sustainable, edible, living public artwork- fruit trees planted and mapped by the public for everyone to share.”

But I’ll let David and Austin explain…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6UTC1gwYNU

As you can see in the video The Endless Orchard campaign is now a Kickstarter being broken into two phases.

In Phase I of the project the creators aim to plant some 200 trees  in the area surrounding Los Angeles Historic State Park then use the rest of the funds to a build web hub where users can map and share their public fruit finds.

If it works out, Phase II will continue the growth of the initiative by creating a trail head marker, a “Monument to Sharing,” within the orange grove at the Los Angeles State Historic Park in Downtown Los Angeles and build the ‘Endless Orchard’ mobile APP (free for the public to use).

Endless Orchard Project

Credit: Endless Orchard via Kickstarter

Ultimately it would be up to the individuals who plant the trees to take care of them (which might include everything from avocados and berries to oranges and peaches) but the idea is the planting would occur on public spaces which (in many cases) will have existing irrigation systems, thus making maintenance of the trees an easier process.

It would be then up to the community to ensure the fruit trees are shared and responsibly harvested.

In any case, it sounds like a pretty interesting idea, and I just thought I’d pass along the info in case anyone wanted to contribute.

If you want to donate and/or learn more about the project, head over to the official Kickstarter page for the Endless Orchard: Phase I.

As of the writing of this post, the crowdfunding effort is about half way to their $20,000 goal.

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