Free fruit plan takes root

CRAIG SIMCOX/The Dominion Post

FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS: Ashleigh Bruce, 6, with a fig tree to be planted in a community orchard on council land in Brooklyn.

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A Brooklyn walkway is to be transformed into a community orchard with free fruit.

The Brooklyn Transition Group has support from Wellington City Council to plant fruit trees on public land next to a track between Harrison and Garfield streets.

Group spokesman Marc Slade said there would be enough room for up to 40 trees. "There will probably be apples, pears, apricots, feijoas and other things that grow well in Wellington.

"We are taking advice on the best species to plant. The idea is it will be available to the community to go and have some fruit as and when they like."

He said the trees would probably be planted in August, with the quickest-growing varieties producing fruit within three years.

The transition group was born out of a social movement that started in Britain a few years ago. It finds green solutions to problems such as rising food costs.

"The orchard will be a big advantage to local people who are hurting because of the recession. It will provide free, healthy food that is grown on your doorstep."

Some of the trees will be trained to grow along wires much like grape vines to about shoulder height. "You need to make it easy for people to pick fruit from trees without breaking their necks."

Mr Slade hoped the orchard would be self-policed by the public to stop too much fruit from being stripped by a few people.

Group member Mel Beirne said she had committed to the project for the benefit of future generations, such as her six-year-old daughter, Ashleigh Bruce.

"I really want them to get a true sense of what a community is. I can see my children walking through, picking an apple on the way home from school."

Further community orchards are at a conceptual stage, according to the council's environment portfolio leader, Celia Wade-Brown.

"There could be a ... community orchard running along the drainage reserve that runs on the south side of the bus barns in Kilbirnie.

"There is also one being considered for where the caretaker's cottage used to be on the [Mornington] golf course."

The cottage burnt down several years ago and has never been replaced.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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