Shoppers in Reigate Town Centre received a random act of kindness of the fruity kind on Saturday 16 October. From 10am to 3pm, members of Sustainable Redhill were on the High Street, with a stall near The Market Hotel. They handed out a total of 24 boxes of free fruit, with a take home message to “pick your own”.
The event comes at the same time of year as national Apple Day, which was initiated by Common Ground in 1990. In 2010, the event falls on 21 October.
The juicy bounty was all collected from local fruit and nut trees, with zero associated ‘air miles’. As well as boxes of fruit gathered before the event, residents also brought unwanted apples and pears to the stall during the day. Donations were made from fruit trees in gardens of local streets, including Eversfield Road, Nutley Lane, Deerings Road, Lonesome Lane and Chart Lane.
Members of local group, Growing Redhill, donated Bramley cooking apples and eating apples from their food growing site in Merstham. Reigate business, Clifton Nursery, offered discounts for fruit trees as part of the initiative.
Rebecca Harris, Chair of Sustainable Redhill, is an avid fruit picker and chutney maker. She notes that plums, cherries, hazelnuts, apples and pears can go unnoticed in our gardens. Meanwhile, Surrey shoppers turn to supermarkets for
convenience, leaving their own, free and tasty crops to go to waste.
Said Harris: ‘Local people reacted extremely positively to this initiative, which we believe is the first of its kind in Reigate. We were extremely busy handing out free fruit from 10am and thanks to publicity from the Surrey Mirror, people made a bee line for the stall. The extra donations of cooking and eating apples and pears throughoutthe day, meant we could distribute even more. People told me it was a wonderfulevent, and should be repeated. I collected details from local people with trees willing to donate next year. I want to spread the message to “pick your own” this Apple Day’.
