https://reasonstobecheerful.world/falling-fruit-urban-foraging/
"In a quiet corner of New York City, wild mint pushes up between the cracks of
a rooftop, its scent carried on the wind. It’s an unlikely place for an edible
plant to thrive, but for those who know where to look, the city is full of such
hidden bounty. And thanks to a global movement called Falling Fruit, anyone can
find and enjoy it.
FallingFruit.org is an interactive, open-source map that marks more than 1.6
million edible plants in urban spaces around the world, from Berlin’s apple
orchards to the mulberry trees of Los Angeles. What began as a small-scale
experiment by two friends — Caleb Philips and Ethan Welty — has grown into a
vast global database, transforming the way people see the landscapes around
them.
For Welty, the project was deeply personal. “I grew up in France, and so I had
a strong sense that place begets flavor,” he says. “There’s a lot about food in
the landscape. I remember foraging for chestnuts, picking daffodils, mushroom
hunting.” When his family moved back to Seattle, his connection to food and
nature remained strong, but it wasn’t until he relocated to Boulder, Colorado,
for graduate school that he began seeing cities as foraging grounds.
“There were apple trees in my backyard,” he recalls. “I got into home brewing,
making cider, and I had the equipment from beer making. But then I wanted more
apples.” That desire led him to look at the city differently — recognizing
fruit trees overhanging bike paths, spotting neglected bounty in public parks.
What seemed obvious to him was a revelation to others. “People were amazed or
incredulous,” he says. “It was surprising to them that you could just harvest
fruit in a city.”
Welty’s foraging soon took on a more structured form. A project at the
University of Colorado in 2008 had introduced him to urban food mapping —
analyzing how much food could be produced in a city by using small parcels of
land for farming. “The City of Boulder sent me a bunch of data, including their
tree inventory,” he says. At first, Welty was cutting out the trees because
they blocked sunlight and got in the way of urban farming equipment. But later,
when he started foraging, he realized those trees weren’t obstacles — they were
opportunities.
His personal maps — scribbled notes and hand-drawn guides — became the
foundation for what would soon become Falling Fruit. Then he met Caleb Philips,
a fellow forager with a technical background and a shared fascination with the
overlooked abundance in urban environments. “We met in January 2013, and we
basically got right to work on Falling Fruit,” Welty says. They launched the
first version of the site just three months later."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
