Fruit and berry-bearing bushes and trees are to be planted at churchyards, parks, playgrounds and sporting facilities in Copenhagen.

Free, pickable fruit is to become more readily available to people in the Danish capital as a result of a new Copenhagen Municipality initiative, Politiken reports.

The municipality is to launch a new “administrative basis for greenery with edible plants and fruit-bearing bushes,” the newspaper writes.

A decision by the city’s council (Borgerrepræsentation) must be formalized before planting begins, the report notes. That is expected to occur in a straightforward manner on Thursday.

“Many Copenhageners don’t have their own gardens and therefore don’t have a chance to see the learning process, including for children, that nature is something you can use,” Astrid Aller, a city councillor with the Socialist People’s Party (SF), told Politiken.

“It might seem like a small thing but it’s part of our aim for Copenhagen to be a place you want to be, not a place you drive around by car.

“We want a city where you’re not just at home, at work or at a park, but where the whole city is a space in which people want to be,” she continued.

Trees and plants bearing edible fruit or berries can, up to now, only be found in nature reserves such as Amager Nature Park.

Asked whether fruit-bearing trees in the city could be a target for misuse, Aller said taking fruit with the purpose of selling it would be “too inefficient”.

“I find it difficult to imagine anyone emptying the bushes in order to sell the fruit,” she said.

“And if a family plucks two berry bushes to make jam, that’s hardly going to make me see red,” she added.

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