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A Taste of Canada’s Food-Tree Groups

Urban foraging organizations across the country are feeding the needy – and more.

Hidden Harvest Ottawa was founded in 2012 to help reduce the amount of food going to waste from untended public fruit trees around the city. Read more about it in Concrete Orchard in the Art & Media issue.

Hidden Harvest Ottawa was founded in 2012 to help reduce the amount of food going to waste from untended public fruit trees around the city. Read more about it in Concrete Orchard in the Art & Media issue.

Not Far From the Tree, founded in 2008, helps Toronto homeowners put their food-bearing trees to good use, splitting the bounty three ways: tree owners keep one third, volunteers share another, and the final third is delivered to food banks, shelters, and community kitchens by bicycle.

St. John’s Fruit Tree Project was created in 2011 to connect fruit tree owners with volunteer pickers, community kitchens and food banks in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Mississauga Fruit Tree is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization based in Malton, Ontario, which has linked harvesters with backyard tree owners and offered tree care and food preparation programs since 2009.

Fruit Share is a volunteer-led organization formed in 2010 to link fruit owners, volunteers and community groups to collect and share fruit from trees in Winnipeg and elsewhere in Manitoba.

Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton is a non-profit established in 2009 that organizes volunteers to harvest, process and preserve apples, raspberries and other fruit. It also offers food-preserving events and produces fruit-based products.

Harvest Rescue, operating since 1998 in Nelson, BC, and a project of the Nelson Food Cupboard and the Nelson Cares Society’s Earth Matters program, gathers excess food from farmers, gardeners and fruit tree owners and makes it available to social service agencies.

The LifeCycles Fruit Tree Project, launched in Victoria in 1999 by non-profit LifeCycles, harvests fruit from privately owned trees, dividing the harvest among homeowners, volunteers, food banks and other community organizations, and processing some of the products for sale.

The Central Okanagan Fruit Tree Project, started by a group of volunteers with the Central Okanagan Food Policy Council, demonstrates that even smaller municipalities can make urban foraging work!

Read about the ambitious people behind Hidden Harvest Ottawa and how they’re helping feed those in need in Concrete Orchard. Order your copy of the Art & Media issue today.