A group of people in San Francisco called the Guerrilla Grafters surreptitiously graft fruit tree branches onto non-fruiting trees in public spaces in the city -about 50 trees so far. Tom Levy of SFGate spoke with two of the "undercover orchardists," Tara Hui and Miriam Goldberg.
"The intention of doing guerrilla grafting is not so much for the sake of challenging authority, but to set an example - a working example - to counter the arguments," said Hui, a Beijing-born urban gardener and gray water activist with a computer science degree. "If we have a prototype, we can have a legitimate rational discussion on the issue."
But challenge authority it does. According to Mohammed Nuru, chief of San Francisco's Department of Public Works, guerrilla grafting is vandalism. The department says that no matter who plants or maintains a street tree, if it's on a sidewalk or other right-of-way area under city jurisdiction, it's publicly owned.
City officials say fruit trees are forbidden because fallen fruit could be a safety hazard. So far, there have been no complaints and no arrests. Link to story. Link to website. -Thanks, Kirsten!
(Image credit: Tom Levy)
@Alexander Landfair, I agree if the grafter isn't going to take care to make sure the fruit goes to good use (the WHOLE point of guerilla grafting) then they should refrain from grafting. Grafting isn't easy and have to be nurtured so hopefully there will be little waste.