As you can see, though the value may not be fully realized, the concept of the commons as it pertains to food growing has not been totally lost in some cultures, and in some places, the practice is coming back strongly.
Public food forests are fabulous but if you really want to get the full yields from them, spend some design time thinking through all the invisible structure yields you can get from them. How can you make the maintenance of them as simple as possible?
One of the main objections to public food forests is that they’re messy. They drop fruit, people can step on it or slip, the fruit attracts bugs and rats, etc.
Think about where the fruit will fall - will mulberries fall in the path where people will walk and then track the stains into their cars or homes, or nearby buildings? Mulberries are notorious for staining carpets especially.
Will fruit fall where people can slip on it? Will the fruit attract rats that could create problems elsewhere nearby? Fruit rats are more like larger field mice than the usual city rat one thinks of. They’re quite cute. But people get concerned about diseases and other issues.
What resources do they provide to the system? They can become food for feral cats that can reduce the numbers of bird kills. And they clean up the fallen fruit. Every element in the system has its pros and cons.
In New York City foraging wild foods or food in the commons is illegal. This is because there is a concern that with the concentrated population, foraging opportunities will end up harming or destroying what few wild areas exist in the city.
So, how do you design for that? The artist Mary Mattingly put her food forest on a barge, on the water, circumventing that law. What about rooftops, or abandoned lots, or other areas that aren’t being used?
Food gardens would go best in areas that are somewhat protected from the pollution from traffic. See our village scale solutions for how this could be - and is being - done in urban areas.