IJsselstein has the largest public fruit tree collection in Europe. Recently, researchers took a closer look at them. Their measurements show that the 2,200 fruit trees together produce oxygen for a thousand people, provide about 12 degrees of cooling on a hot summer day, remove 143 kilos of pollutants from the air every year and collect more than 3 million liters of rainwater.
Researchers made the calculations to eventually be able to put a kind of price tag on the fruit trees. They therefore established the so-called nature value of the IJsselstein fruit trees at 1.43 million euros. They want to use the facts to indicate that greenery – and specifically the fruit trees – are important for people’s living environment.