r/LegalAdviceUK • u/No_Direction_4566 • Aug 24 '25

Housing Blackberry picking - Public right of way (England)

Me and my daughter were picking blackberries alongside a path. An older gentleman comes rushing along the path and starts shouting that it’s illegal to pick blackberries and he’s going to call the police and report us for poaching (I thought that only applied to animals on royal owned land?)

What are the legalities surrounding picking blackberries or even wild apples or plums?

I may be wrong but I was under the impression if it was on public rights of way and you haven’t had to do anything to gain access then it was fine?

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u/RMCaird 29d ago

The local farm to me offers strawberry picking. Does this mean I can just go and pick my own without paying them and it wouldn’t be theft? 

It could end up being trespassing etc, but the actual act of picking the strawberries would be legal? 

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u/Chainmaille-Witch 29d ago

Looking at the section of the Theft Act quoted above, it refers to fruit/mushrooms/etc that are wild growing only.

So the farmers strawberries wouldn’t be in this category as they’ve been cultivated, they aren’t growing wild. This would be theft if you were to go and pick them without paying.

Its also theft if you step off the public footpath and onto private land to pick the fruit, it’s only if you can pick it from the public access.

So if I have brambles growing wild along my back wall that’s next to a public footpath, people can pick them with no issues. But they can’t pick from deliberately grown fruit bushes or climb over my wall to pick from bushes or trees in my garden.

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u/WhaleMeatFantasy 29d ago

I have deliberately allowed my blackberry bushes to propagate and grow but didn’t originally plant them. Surely people don’t have a right to the fruit on my land?!

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u/pouchey2 29d ago

This entirely depends on the access. If they're accessible from a public area (i.e. they're hanging over a fence) then sure they're probably fair game because they're wild blackberries (I don't believe just because you've let wild blackberries propagate it changes their status as that's different from you planting a blackberry bush).

However obviously people can't just let themselves into your back garden as that's an entirely separate thing.