England’s greenest city makes the most of all the fruit that is literally on its doorstep

While 70% of apples consumed in the UK are imported, and an even bigger percentage of pears and plums, there is an unpicked resource literally lying on the ground. Many fruit trees are tucked away in squares, parks and gardens around cities where the fruit just falls and then goes to waste.

Fruit trees are well suited to the urban environment as they can be trained or grown on dwarfing rootstocks to fit into small spaces. Once they have settled in, they require little maintenance compared to vegetables, making them perfect for busy city dwellers.

Grow Sheffield was set up in 2007 by Anne-Marie Culhane, an environmental artist and community catalyst. “My motivation was to draw people together to share knowledge and best practice on urban food,” she says, “and to ensure that the importance of urban food and a supporting culture is recognised as part of a sustainable city.”

With the experience gained, Grow Sheffield produced The Abundance Handbook as a guide to community urban fruit harvesting. The book gives tips on knowing when the fruit is ready, how to harvest it and what to do with it. Having identified potential trees, the next steps are: establishing a group to pick the crop; getting the owner’s permission if it grows on private land; acquiring the equipment for harvesting; finding somewhere to store the fruit and points of distribution; and organising suitable ways to transport it.

Inspired by Sheffield’s example, a growing number of other cities are forming groups to map their fruit trees, such as Hackney Harvest, who are targeting three areas in East and South East London. The organisation is encouraging tree owners to turn their harvest into delicious food. They also offer to take the fruit off their hands and make jams, chutneys, cakes, pies, crumbles, strudels, flans, ice cream, juice, or cider. Over the winter a series of rejuvenation workshops will develop the local skills needed to look after the fruit trees in the long-run.

Supporting Hackney Harvest is the London Orchard Project, who say they are ushering in a fruit revolution by working with Londoners to plant and harvest apple, pear and plum trees all over the city, helping people rediscover the pleasure of eating home-grown fruit.

Contact: www​.growsheffield​.com
www​.hackneyharvest​.com
www​.thelondonorchardproject​.org

Squash on Sharrow Street, Sheffield
Photo: copyright Bob Levene www​.boblevene​.co​.uk