It’s that time of year again: the Wallingford Orchards are hanging heavy and sweet with fruit: plump plums, crunchy apples, badonka donk pears, all within reach.
But should you reach for them? Therein lies the conundrum: is fruit that grows from a tree planted by a private citizen but hanging over a city-owned sidewalk community property or private property? Are the property rights of a plum derived from its roots or its airspace? What about fruit growing from a tree planted in a parking strip? The City of Seattle technically owns the area between the sidewalk and the street, not the homeowner the land fronts.
Allow us to channel Chuck Closterman, author of the The Ethicist column for the New York Times.*
Dear Wallyhood Ethicist (we write to ourselves):
My neighborhood is filled with ripe fruit that is falling to the ground and rotting. These seem to belong to my neighbor, as they grow from a tree he planted in the parking strip in front of his house, but he doesn’t seem to care for them. Indeed, is it not a crime to let food go to waste with the world in the state it is. Is it OK for me to eat from his tree?
– J.S., Wallingford
Dear JS:
It is not a crime to let the fruit go to waste. A crying shame, yes. An affront to decency, perhaps. A crime, no.
Whether it is a crime to eat the fruit of your neighbor in these circumstances, we’re not sure. Given that it is not growing on your neighbor’s property (the parking strip belongs to the city) nor is it hanging over your neighbor’s property, it doesn’t seem like it belongs to your neighbor.
However, we would all agree that if your neighbor had placed a tree in a bucket on the parking strip while he loaded it into his car, and you stripped it of its fruit, that would be stealing. Thus, it is not simply the location of the tree that determines property ownership, but historical ownership. If your neighbor purchased the tree and placed it on public property, even submerging its roots beneath ground, that is not necessarily waiving their rights of ownership.
Perhaps a real lawyer should weigh in on this issue, as there are no lawyers on staff at Wallyhood. There’s barely a staff, honestly.
Instead, let’s look at what is arguably the more important question: ought you eat your neighbor’s fruit?
The simplest resolution here is to ask: knock on their door, ask if it’s alright if you pick their fruit. If they say no, then you shouldn’t. If they say yes, have at it. Not so hard, right?
But what if they’re not home? What if it’s late at night and that one plum is singing out to you, begging you to pluck it?
Here, we shall take what is likely to be an unpopular position in some quarters: eat it. It’s fine. It’s a plum, it’s an apple. What’s the big deal? If there are only a few, and they’re not ripe, please leave them alone, but if the tree is heavy and the ground mushy with windfall, it’s obvious that you are denying nothing to anyone by taking the fruit for yourself.
But you know what would make this easier? If the fruit owners would make their wishes known proactively. Fruit tree owners, hang a note from your tree: “Eat me! Pluck me! Pop me in your mouth!” We did exactly this with our Sweet Million cherry tomato plant that we grew next to our walkway by the sidewalk, and it seems to have worked quite well. Our usually overabundance of tomatoes, impossible to keep up with, has been thinned to a satisfying bushel and we’ve heard more than couple thank yous from grateful passersby. We’d like to offer a big thank you in turn to the folks who put their pears out in a box by Sunnyside and 42nd: we ate around the bad parts, and they were tasty!
But what about all those apples on 42nd? We’ve been here for years and know they’ll never be harvested, they’ll rot on the ground. So…pick or pass?
* We prefer to channel Chuck than Randy Cohen, his predecessor, who we found too cutesy even for our taste. I know, right?
Thanks for taking this subject on.Thanks for taking this subject on. I have cherries, apples and plums planted inside a fence but hanging over the sidewalk. In 10 plus years I have only once had someone come to my door and ask to pick some fruit. People I don’t even know seem to feel it is ok at any time to pick whatever they like. I feel this is stealing. One year someone picked my whole cherry tree overnight…..it wasn’t even ripe yet. Having said that, I don’t really mind if people come and take one or two or even a handful as a snack. However I do not think it is modeling positive behavior for adults with children to encourage their children to help themselves. I do not agree with you that you should feel free to help yourself if the owners appear to be not home. You never know what the tree has been sprayed with, and you also do not know, or is it any of your business, what the owner’s intentions are. In my case, my trees are picked by Lettuce Link, a program of Common Ground, and go to area food banks. Fruit on trees do not all ripen at exactly the same time. Some apples may fall from the tree (ripe or not) looking like it is wasted, while other apples on the tree are not yet ripe. No one should who does not own the tree should make assumptions (read rationalizations) and take anything without asking….ever. For me, if you don’t ask, you are stealing…..even if the person who owns the tree, planted it, maintains it, prunes it, cleans up after it, waters it, fertilizes it, etc., etc. does not appear to be at home.
BaDonkaDonk pears. I love it.
I have Italian prune plumbs that are ripe now. Please email me if you are interested in coming over to pick some. There is an excellent cooks Illustrated recipe for an Austrian Italian plumb cake using these plumbs. I also made plumb chutney from the Ball canning cookbook that was quite nice.
daranee_o at yahoo
I’m in lower Wallingford btw.
It makes me very sad when I see so many wonderful fruits unpicked from my neighbors’ yards in Wallingford. I cannot give a link here but I’m sure that food banks would be a place to start. And I think I’ve even heard of an organization who will pick the fruit and deliver it to food banks. Waste not, want not.
Hey Marty, the organization that picks fruit from trees for use in food banks is Lettuce Link’s Community Fruit Tree Harvest through Solid Ground:
http://www.solid-ground.org/Programs/Nutrition/FruitTree/Pages/default.aspx
If you have fruit on your property that you want to donate, note that Lettuce Link only accepts fruit that is pesticide-free and in good condition. To donate fruit, call Seattle Tilth’s Garden Hotline at 206.633.0224 or email [email protected].
Jon –
Totally agree. My BF and I were planning to pick his figs, and were monitoring the crop on his tree. Someone – seemingly overnight – came along and picked the tree clean. No note, no knock on the door, etc. It’s theft.
-Risa
I’m so glad you have the correct information.
That’s so helpful. Thank you!
There is definitly a line, but not even a fine line, between picking 1 or 2 plums from an abundantly stocked tree (I vote ok), and picking a tree clean when no one is home ( clearly stealing). Iagree that talking to the neighbor about it and asking permission is the obvious first choice.
More contact info for the folks who will gladly harvest your excess fruit:
Amanda Lee
Lettuce Link Harvest Coordinator
Solid Ground, Building Community to End Poverty
1501 N. 45th St. Seattle, WA 98103
(206) 694-6751
Legally, by the way, the sidewalk belongs to the property owner (who may be liable, for example, if you slip and fall on it). The public merely has an easement for the purpose of traversing the property.
When we lived on North 77th Street we had a raspberry patch, some of whose canes hung over the sidewalk, and my wife and I discussed the degree to which we wanted to share them. However, one smug slacker really annoyed me by proclaiming that they were public property since they hung over the sidewalk, after he ate some. He was not only incorrect, but the unfairness was pretty obvious to me (but not to him). Perhaps he thought the berries sprang from the earth as a gift to humanity. But we had bought the house in part because of the plants in the yard, and spent ample time and money watering, weeding, fertilizing, and pruning. We picked all the ripe berries for our child – the patch didn’t generate enough for us to have as well. So the issue touches a nerve here…
Typically, in Seattle, the sidewalk and planting strip are owned by the city, not the owner of the adjacent property.
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/stuse_faq.htm#gen1
I’ve just spent a few minutes looking for any authoritative source for the ownership question, and the best I could find was kind of ambiguous – a definition of “parking strip” that puts it between the curb and the property line.
But in any case it isn’t clear that it matters. I mean given all the easements and concessions on other matters, it’s hard to be sure that private ownership would give you any rights to the produce.
In my opinion, property lines do not really exactly model the real living society they serve anyway. If you want call the police about someone picking your raspberries, then your best hope as a legal matter might I suppose lie in the legal ownership question, but of course in reality the police will not come, and we’re left to sort these matters out as we do most of the time, at a societal level, and then in my view it isn’t about property lines. Your ownership of the raspberry bush, in our society, really comes from your undisputed responsibility for it – it belongs to the one who has been cultivating it. (If you cultivated a raspberry bush in the traffic circle in the nearest intersection, responsibility in that case could be disputed, so that would be more ambiguous.)
Anyway, from what I’ve read about certain Queen Anne locations, just be glad you don’t have chestnuts. (Or if you do, keep quiet about it.)
My understanding is that the city owns the parking strip land, but the property owner has the responsibility to care for plantings (trees in particular) in the parking strip.
See the SDOT Street Trees web site:
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/treeplanting.htm
The City of Seattle encourages the planting of trees along public streets. A property owner may plant a tree in a street planting strip if he or she first obtains a permit from the City Arborist’s Office. There is no charge for the permit, but the procedure allows the City Arborist to review the type of tree and the planting location. After you receive the permit to plant, you will be responsible for properly planting and maintaining the tree. This includes watering during the drier seasons, mulching and pruning.
In accordance with City Ordinance #90047 Title 15 Street Use Code, it will be the responsibility of the property owner to maintain the tree(s) in perpetuity.
In Seattle, they are PLANTING strips. As in “plant your strips.” And regulated as such.
Regulated as such? I’m dense this morning, that didn’t give me much insight into whether I may pick your apples.
Regarding ownership – it’s a well documented fact that the city requires us to maintain the parking strip, but that doesn’t address whether we own it, and it’s a widespread though probably false belief that we do own it.
As I mentioned above, there is some verbiage that implies we don’t own it. One of the publications containing such verbiage is of interest in the present discussion,
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/cams/CAM2305.pdf “Gardening in Planting Strips.” Which begins: “Many Seattle residents are interested in planting vegetables and other edible foods in the planting strip immediately abutting their properties.” Since “abut” means it’s next to your property, it clearly implies it is not part of your property.
But then it goes on to talk about what you may plant there: “Please note that SDOT prohibits certain trees, including fruiting cherry, apple, and pear species that can pose a safety risk to pedestrians when fruit falls on the walkway.”
So it looks to me like there’s no legal basis for this discussion if we’re talking about apples, since those would be illegal anyway. Again, that doesn’t mean there are no apple trees being planted in parking strips, it doesn’t mean we don’t have ideas about who the apples belong to, it just means we can’t resolve the issue by appeal to ordinances, property lines, etc.
Thank you for this post! It has inspired lots of sharing and chatter! A neighbor invited me to pick plums in her yard on our way home from JSIS this morning!! Go, Wallyhood. I am happy to have people come for sage (back yard) or rosemary (front yard) at 4030 2nd Ave NE! Our apples have reached the end of their run but people are welcome to them if they appear over our sidewalk once again.
To be clear, you don’t own the parking strip in front of your home, but you are supposed to maintain it. The city can take that strip away at anytime and widen the road, or make other improvements (put in a phone or cable box, etc.) as needed.
Look at your lot diagram from your current mortgage. It won’t be included in your lot footage.
As for the fruit, I personally don’t feel right taking it, especially if I know my neighbor’s maintaining the tree/crop, but there’s nothing legally wrong with it. Agree with the asking policy if you have to have that. Also no plant in a planting strip is supposed to be higher than 3 ft tall for visibility’s sake, so urban corn and sunflowers, are a no no.
SDOT’s legal opinion about fruit trees is in transition. The “Trees for Neighborhoods” program last month donated pear and crabapple trees to homeowners for planting as street trees (in parking/planting strips).
Historically, fruit trees have been seen as nuisances by SDOT and many property owners because so many folks do not clean up fallen fruit, do not have their fruit trees harvested, and generally allow the messes to accumulate.
Organizations such as Lettuce Link / Community Fruit Tree Harvest and CIty Fruit do what they can, but they need to known where the fruit is, and it needs to be a good enough quality where food bank customers will want to eat it.
http://www.seattle.gov/trees/availabletrees.htm
The Pear trees are listed in the Yard Tree section. The Crabapples are street trees with insignificant, persevering fruit (bird habitat). At the last SDON tree planting I participated in (2011), various trees were offered for planting strips; dwarf cherry trees and 5-way apple trees were offered for in-yard planting. See link above for the categories. That said, some people misunderstood and initially planted some fruit trees on the strips but later moved them.
“… and it needs to be a good enough quality …” Huge problem with apples, true? Even if people were accustomed to apples with slightly irregular contours, scabs here and there, etc., in my immediate neighborhood the apples are practically guaranteed to have 2 species of worms tunneling through them unless you go to a lot of trouble to prevent it. Something you marauding passers-by might bear in mind.