‘225’: City Citrus encourages planting fruit trees, sharing the wealth

BREC’s Highland Road and Expressway parks are now ripe with satsuma trees ready for picking. As 225 reports in a feature from the current issue, the trees are a part of a relatively new project called City Citrus, which aims to plant fruit trees in public and semi-public spaces. By the end of this planting season, City Citrus will have around 80 fruit trees in the ground around Baton Rouge. Program director Robert Seeman tells 225 that the idea behind the project is “for the trees to be open for public grazing.” The project was launched last year by Baton Rouge Green, a nonprofit focused on conserving and planting trees throughout the area. City Citrus is part of a larger urban gardening trend. Community gardens and farmers markets have grown exponentially over the past 20 years, and now, open-source fruit tree programs are on the rise. “They’re popular because of their lower maintenance—once an orchard is established, it can be much easier to manage than a community garden,” writes Maggie Heyn Richardson in the feature. Baton Rouge is now in the ranks with cities such as New Orleans; Portland, Oregon; and Vancouver—all of which are using fruit trees to build community, increase attractiveness and contribute to the greater good. Read the full feature.