#grafter chic

[themancorialist]

High Street, Manchester.

[climatecalling]

“The city doesn’t like fruit trees,” Marisa Prefer, a self-described “street-tree steward,” said recently, looking up at a plumless plum tree in Brooklyn. Prefer is part of an anonymous collective known as the Guerrilla Grafters, which hopes to change the city’s canopy. Their mission: “We aim to turn city streets into food forests, and unravel capitalist civilization one branch at a time.” Flash back to the springtime, when Prefer, who is nonbinary and wore double-kneed work pants and mud-caked trail runners, brandished a pair of pruning shears at a plum tree. They said, “What if everyone had an apple tree in front of their house instead of having to go buy apples at the store?” Prefer snipped a low branch, then used black electrical tape to graft a gnarly twig of rosy-gage scionwood in its place. (Scionwood is a twig cutting used to propagate trees.) In a few years, the twig might grow into a branch drooping with plums. ... Prefer went on, “ ‘Guerrilla’ is not just a chic term we use. It’s supposed to be a little bit secret.” There haven’t been any arrests, they said, but, technically, grafting on city property is illegal.