{"id":1397,"date":"2016-07-14T14:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T21:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/?p=1397"},"modified":"2018-05-16T02:09:23","modified_gmt":"2018-05-16T09:09:23","slug":"the-guerrilla-grafting-movement-secretly-grafting-fruit-bearing-branches-onto-ornamental-city-treesthe-guerrilla-grafting-movement-secretly-grafting-fruit-bearing-branches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/the-guerrilla-grafting-movement-secretly-grafting-fruit-bearing-branches-onto-ornamental-city-treesthe-guerrilla-grafting-movement-secretly-grafting-fruit-bearing-branches\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guerrilla Grafting Movement — Secretly Grafting Fruit-Bearing Branches Onto Ornamental City Trees\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a group of fruit lovers in San Francisco that practice something known as \u201cguerrilla grafting\u201d \u2013\u00a0\u00a0they graft fruit bearing branches\u00a0onto fruitless, ornamental trees across the Bay Area city.\u00a0Having access to free fruit sounds like a wonderful idea, considering the number of homeless people who can rarely afford a decent meal, but guerrilla grafting is actually illegal.<\/p>\n

In many metropolitan areas, urban foresters make sure that flowering fruit trees don\u2019t bear any fruit, in order\u00a0to keep fallen fruit from making a mess on\u00a0sidewalks and attracting vermin. Most public trees are fruitless, a fact that the Guerilla Grafters obviously don\u2019t like. While authorities see urban fruit-bearing trees as a nuisance, these agricultural rebels see them as an opportunity to provide fresh, healthy produce for free to anyone who walks by.<\/p>\n

According to their Facebook page, \u201cGuerrilla Grafters is a grassroots group that sees a missed opportunity for cities to provide a peach or a pear to anyone strolling by. Their objective is to restore sterile city trees into fruit-bearers by grafting branches from fertile trees. The project may not resolve food scarcity, but it helps foster a habitat that sustains us.\u201d Their mission, they say is to make delicious, nutritious fruit available to urban residents through these grafts\u2026<\/p>\n

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As noble as their intentions may seem to most of us, guerrilla grafting is illegal and classified as vandalism by San Francisco\u2019s Department of Public Works. It doesn\u2019t matter who plants the tree, who grafts branches, or who maintains it, if it\u2019s on a sidewalk, it\u2019s publicly owned and messing with it is a crime. But as of 2012, the department did not plan to actively pursue grafters. \u201cUnless someone is caught in the act, there\u2019s not much we could do,\u201d said spokesperson Gloria Chan, adding that it is hard to catch because the average person doesn\u2019t know what an illegal graft looks like so it\u2019s not likely to get reported.<\/p>\n

However, some people seem to think guerrilla grafting is a very serious problem. \u201cIt gets very dangerous very quickly,\u201d said Carla Short,\u00a0an urban forester for the San Francisco Department of Public Works. \u201cI mean the minute that fruit gets crushed on the sidewalk, it is slippery. We certainly don\u2019t want people to get injured.\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

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