Free food
An olive tree in Mount Victoria is one of the many locations Annelies Zwaan has gone to find free food around Wellington.
Fruit trees on council land, wild herbs growing in parks, and vegetables lining suburban streets all can now be located via google maps.
Olive trees on footpaths in Mount Victoria and rosemary bushes near Dixon Street are just some of the edible and free things to forage for around the city.
Edible Wellington, as part of organisation 42 Collective, and the Auckland Underground Fruit Economy, uses the online maps to pinpoint places to find the food.
Anyone can join the groups and add locations where they know the public can find trees and plants growing.
“There’s heaps of fennel growing here, just across from the basin. By the rocks. Follow your nose. It’s growing like a weed,” reads a comment submitted by google user ‘Fredd’, pinpointing a spot near the Basin Reserve.
But a word of caution, the gatherers guides can sometimes be as hard to find as the fruit themselves.
Annelies Zwaan trawled the internet to find the best places to pick fruit and vegetables in Wellington after hearing about the Auckland Underground Fruit Economy’s Auckland map.
“I had to search quite hard to find anything for Wellington. But it is such a brilliant resource and all for free, there’s not really a downside to it.”
Zwaan says she uses the guides whenever she knows there’s a particular fruit in season that is likely to be found on the roadside.
Auckland Underground Fruit Economy, a group that can be found on facebook, has locations for Wellington produce if you scroll down the google map to find Wellington city.
Edible Wellington’s map can be accessed through the website www.42collective.org.nz
Hannah Spyksma
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