Advocates envision free fruit and nuts for Madison Park
Talk with advocates of the newest tree-loving initiative in the city, and the mind conjures visions of Madison as a latter-day Eden dotted with trees heavy with fruit, ripe for the picking.
As impossibly idyllic as that may sound, it’s pretty much what the members of Madison Fruit and Nuts have in mind: fruit-bearing (and nut-bearing) trees in a public place near you, where you can watch the fruit form and ripen and when the time is just right, reach up and pluck it.
“We want free, organic, locally grown fruit to be there and available to anyone,” says Janet Parker. A member of the Madison Park Board of Commissioners, Parker is also a driving force in Madison Fruit and Nuts, an informal grassroots group whose zealous drive to spread fruit through the city is finding fertile ground. After an organizational meeting in December that attracted nearly 100 people and later, a warm reception from the Park Board, organizers started working with Parks Division staff to identify parks that might be appropriate for small orchard plantings.
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