The Case for Planting Fruit Trees Along Residential Streets, Not Just Compounds

Public street plantings in Donholm have mostly favoured pure shade and indigenous species, for good reason: they need less ongoing care and nobody has a legitimate claim to harvest from a tree standing on a public footpath. Fruit trees introduce complications that shade trees do not.

Even so, we have started including a small number of fruit-bearing indigenous species, such as wild fig varieties that support birds and pollinators, in select public plantings, particularly along green corridors bordering schools and community gathering points.

The reasoning is partly ecological: fruiting trees support a wider range of wildlife than pure shade species, and partly social, a tree that produces something visible and shared tends to be better protected by the community around it rather than seen as purely decorative infrastructure.

We are deliberately cautious about where this applies. Species chosen for public planting still need to be robust, low-maintenance and unlikely to cause disputes over harvesting, which rules out most conventional fruit trees like mango or avocado from street-level planting for now.

It is a small, careful shift rather than a wholesale change in approach, and one we are tracking closely to see whether it actually improves how well these particular trees are looked after by the neighbourhoods around them.