I wrote this piece in 1999. It describes a situation in Cambridge, MA in the 1980s. Now the only raspberries left are in the community gardens. Seems that public and community greens get decimated every decade. Longer term planning and planting might make more sense, building in resilence in the event of climate and other possible changes.
From mid-August to first frost, I usually picked a few raspberries each morning from the canes next to the Pearl Street sidewalk. On the other side of my small garden, there was a bunch of grapes hidden in the leaves ripe for the picking, so many that I told my neighbors to help themselves. And once a week I'd go down to Magazine Beach to gorge on the berries hidden near the Cottage Farm Pumping Station. Fat, juicy berries I could pick by the handful for my raspberry gobble. I kept telling myself, "The more you pick, the more that grow."
All of these plants are remnants of an old state-funded program called Fruition. At the end of the 1970s, then State Representative Mel King proposed a bill that distributed fruit and nut trees and bushes for planting on publicly accessible land. The program was funded for $60,000 but the full amount was never spent.
Community gardens, parks, and public lands all across the Commonwealth received rootstock for planting in the Spring and the Fall for a couple of years and thousands of trees and bushes are out there still providing food for the birds and the bees and those who have eyes to see and hands to reach for the freshest fruit.
In Cambridge, the Watson Street community garden got blueberries, raspberries, currants and gooseberries. The Cottage Farm Pumping Station had luxuriant grapes growing all over its fences and raspberries were planted in public view next to the river. When the program began, Susan McLucas and I did a city-wide inventory of greenspaces with recommendations for plantings (grapes and raspberries along the fences, a cherry tree here, an apple tree there) and notations of existing publicly accessible fruits (the cherry trees along Memorial Drive, a giant mulberry near Mt Auburn Street, grapevines throughout the backyards and driveways of the city). We presented it to the then head of the Conservation Commission who took one look at our maps and uttered an astonished, "You're serious!" We never heard from the Conservation Commission again.
But the plants are still there. The garden on Emily Street still has a fine raspberry patch. So does the Watson Street garden, having gone through at least four cycles of destruction and rebirth. I know I propagated more currants, gooseberry, and raspberry patches from the stock on Watson Street, first to my own garden, then to friends.
For a time, I could take a morning walk and eat currants and gooseberries, blueberries and raspberries, one or two strawberries from all the publicly accessible gardens I'd made. After such a walk, I was full of sunlight and power, fresh berries grown without chemicals still wet with dew bursting on my tongue. I dreamed of a city full of such opportunities for everyone, where you could walk the streets and graze for snacks and wondered what trees would clean the air of car exhaust the best and whether we could change just a little bit to have a place that supported life rather than killed it, offered wholesome food for free rather than noxious weeds for top dollar.
The Fruition program is gone now. I believe that most of the plantings still remain though. Perhaps some have gone wild and others have propagated into hundreds of gardens. These days, the work continues through Earthworks Projects Urban Orchard Program. Every year, Earthworks hosts its annual "Tour of the Orchards" with a five mile walk or fifteen mile bike ride through urban orchards in Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and Dorchester. They might even include a couple of sites in Cambridge or Somerville too.
Use your imagination and envision an edible city. Whether you know it or not, it is already happening and needs only recognition and encouragement to burst into bloom and flavorful fruition.
See City Sunday Garden Story for more on the garden streets of Cambridge.