Arboretum Detroit has gotten a little attention for our plan to plant 200 Giant Sequoias here in Detroit. This is expected and welcome. Giant Sequoias have been and continue to be a tree that gets people’s attention; they are in the news and in the lore. They were here way before humans and will be here way after us. So, let us start with thanking them for being here. And thank you for being here too. One of the reasons we are undertaking such an epic project is to get people talking, specifically about human caused climate challenges, environmental degradation, and potent responses to it. Whether you are a Giant Sequoia lover and/or dubious about planting any tree that is non-native, you appear to be here reading this. The topics of climate resilience and assisted migration are extremely important as we see and feel directly the effects of this climate emergency.

While this Giant Sequoia project has gotten your attention, perhaps the 1,000 and counting, native trees that we have planted in our neighborhood have not. As we build our arboretum and reforest our urban neighborhood we are primarily focused on native trees and plants. We have planted over six hundred and fifty native trees and given away another five hundred from our neighborhood tree nursery. We have established acres of native meadow in our parks. The Giant Sequoia project is no different, bringing another 2 acres of meadow and hundreds more native trees alongside and under the Sequoias. Planting trees together in this way is insurance for their survival. Even if we plant some non-natives as sacrifice trees to help reduce the sun and heat stress on the natives they are doing an important job.

 We are not planting the forest that would have been here in the past; we are planting the forest that will be here in the future. We are planting native trees for whom this is the northern edge of their range rather than the southern edge. Even when we plant natives we are opening the conversation about assisted migration and climate adaptation. We are introducing trees that may not yet know each other.  It’s fascinating and enlightening to see which trees are getting along and which are struggling. We are feeling and watching the climate zones migrate. We are helping the trees run from the heat. They can and do run on their own, but not quite fast enough for what modern humans have stirred up. We humans can’t run fast enough either. This is why we are gathering the trees and digging into our home with them.

It is no longer enough to just accept as gospel that native trees are what we need here. It would be nice if this could still be realistic. The calculus is way more complicated in this era of multiple threats to the trees that result from human activity. While I do love Ash, Hemlock, Beech, Red Oak, American Chestnut, and American Elm I have strong reservations about devoting my energy to planting many of these trees here right now. These trees have all been or are now seriously threatened by pests and disease that have come with accumulated human impacts. Rather than putting all our energy into nursing along risky trees that are struggling to be here, we are looking at who wants to be here, who is thriving in spite of the catastrophic changes to their environment. There are so many trees who are here and do not require pampering, anxiety, and the resulting heartbreak when they succumb to the next pest or disease. We cannot really know who will be threatened next and by what. The answer is diversity. We must plant as many species as possible to ensure that we will have a forest no matter what. This is why we are adding climate resilient non-native, non-invasive trees to our mix. One rule of urban forestry that I learned early on is if you want one tree plant two.

Eight year old Giant Sequoia with Eastern White Cedars in Treetroit Two

Starting from Zero?

We are not actually replacing native trees with Giant Sequoias; we are replacing asphalt. We are planting these Sequoias on stolen, denuded, built on then abandoned, bulldozed and landfilled, completely neglected patches of land.  At best vacant land in Detroit is covered in invasive turf, orchard grass, Japanese Knotweed, English Ivy, and miles of crumbling impermeable surfaces. This must be understood to fathom our starting point. We are not even at zero; we are at a measurable deficit. A few hundred years of settler colonial capitalism has set us way back. 

We are in a polluted and stressed out landscape in a polluted and stressed out city. However minimal one might feel the value and “ecological services” of Giant Sequoias are here in Detroit, one must understand that they are far greater than acres of mowed invasive grass. This can be our starting point for the conversation about all the services that these Giant Sequoias will provide us here. Mature Sequoias can store 6 tons of carbon and scrub pounds of pollution from the air annually. As evergreens they continue to capture carbon and particulate pollution year round. Some are reporting carbon sequestration ten times the average tree. Carbon storage and air filtration aside, the shade and cooling would be enough reason for planting these trees.

We deserve to live in shade and beauty.  The trees and people here are growing a vegetated buffer that will break wind and filter pollution laden air coming our way from the waste industry. We need a wall. There is no other tree that will create as great a wall as fast as Giant Sequoias. Unfortunately, protecting ourselves from the pollution seems to be one us. We are able to grow this living wall faster than politicians can enact laws to protect us from these harms.

Giant Sequoias are the biggest finger we can give to the colonial capitalist waste machine. It’s not negative energy; it’s a great way to channel our rage and anxiety into constructive collective work. We all live downwind but in Poletown we live at the exhaust pipe. Planting trees that will grow dozens of feet in diameter and live thousands of years is the greatest stand we can take. This is the greatest message we can send. It arrives from the ages and speaks to a deep future. It’s a timeless message from the Earth, from way before humans took over the planet, way before humans were even a glimmer in this planet’s eye. 

These trees are Jurassic. Dinosaurs scratched their backs on these trees, thrived on a planet cooled by Sequoia shade. And even when dinosaurs just about all died out Sequoias lived on. They are fossils and they are alive today. They are our ancestors and our kin. They are the biggest players on our team in the battle against global warming and pollution. They are also a cool spot in our rapidly heating city. We know that the future is going to look very different. We will not live in the pre-colonial forests that were once cherished and respected here, then decimated by settlers. Nothing will ever be the same. Aren’t we fine ones to be labeling any species “invasive?” There is no greater life force we can meet this moment with than planting as many trees of as many species as we can. We are so honored to be here for this, working with these trees and with Earth to send a message that says we have been here, and we will be here.

75 year old Giant Sequoia at Lake Bluff Farms in Manistee, MI

Trees Beyond Time

In a world where everything is instant and fleeting real time, deep time is stolen from us. Time is often something that confines us, herds us, stresses us out. It’s difficult to know time that stretches out centuries before us and millenia behind. Through Giant Sequoias we connect to this deep sense of time. These clones of the Waterfall and Stagg carry DNA that continues lives germinated over 3,000 years ago. They literally hold these years we call ancient history deep within their hearts. They have put on thousands of rings, measuring a time so vast we have difficulty believing it and understanding it. Maybe this is why we mostly ignore it and treat trees the way we mostly do.

These trees have seen it all, including now witnessing a single animal species take over the planet and render it unlivable for thousands others.  Too many of our beyond human kin to count will never return to this planet, their home; they simply do not exist. It’s hard to understand and accept this kind of nothingness. For this I am deeply grieved and beyond sorry. I try to fathom what this means for an entire species to disappear, let alone for this to happen every day. We are so fortunate to still have the Sequoias here. Can we take the awe and reverence we feel standing in a Giant Sequoia grove and apply that to the Earth and all the living systems that give rise to this wonder? Can we recognize that the planet is too full of gifts to count in a lifetime?  Let us not waste them before we even know them. Capitalism is good at that. Let’s connect to Giant Sequoias and their long long story. Let us be part of this story by helping them live through the anthropocene.

Baby Sequoias in Arboretum Detroit’s tree nursery - Photo by Garrett MacLean

Assisted Migration

Giant Sequoias are facing an existential crisis; they are actually endangered in their native Sierra Nevada range. There are about 500,000 Giant Sequoias living in the United Kingdom, whereas there are only about 80,000 left in the Sierras. Tens of thousands of these gentle giants have been lost to fires there just since 2020. However, across the Atlantic they are thriving while their home for millenia  presents brand new challenges. Human caused climate challenges are making the Sierras much hotter and drier causing wildfires to burn with unprecedented intensity. Sequoias are known for their fire resistance, yet they are now succumbing to the unfamiliar heat. Sequoias were always thought to be indestructible. This is a big part of how they can live over 3,000 years. Thick, flame-resistant bark and elevated crowns are super adapted to natural wildfire. Their cones require fire to open up and propagate. We do not want to sit by while these miracles of the natural world become the next extinction to lament. Can pockets of our cities become arks for these trees? What do we have to lose?

Volunteers planting Giant Sequoia saplings into Arboretum Detroit’s tree nursery

Folks in Poletown have been seeing tractors on these streets for decades.

Paul has been the kind of busy that one could see from space. Maybe you have noticed. His work is especially obvious in Oxygen Alley, which seems to have gone from parking lot to park overnight. Well, it wasn’t overnight. It was in broad daylight with 4 people working full time, alongside the bobcat, the tractor, and the dump truck. Paul operates the unsung heroes of Arboretum Detroit and our Poletown neighborhood. Paul moves them around the neighborhood like a kid using his index finger to drive them around the kitchen floor: beep, beep, beep, dump truck waiting to be loaded with debris over here, tractor moving back and forth scraping up landfilled concrete chunks right here, and bobcat grabbing asphalt and garbage over here. This was the scene all week in Oxygen Alley. With 4 people and these amazing tools we moved an amount of concrete, asphalt and brick, equivalent to the weight of the 21 boulders we placed in the ring: 30 tons. We humans, with all our combined might, could not budge a single boulder. However, over the course of the week picking chunks off the ground and hauling them with wheelbarrows, we lifted many times the weight of a boulder, which is about one ton each.

Arboretum employees Robyn and Idris working alongside volunteers Paul and Sarah to depave the world.

We do a lot of remediation around here, but never have we achieved something quite like this. It is appropriate that this has been our biggest clean-up job ever because Oxygen Alley is, itself, a monument to our community’s fierce battles against, and victories over, the waste industry. You may have heard that this park is a giant air filter and memorial to all of the years we fought, and are still fighting, for environmental justice. On the near East side we bear a heavy burden of the waste industry and spend our time cleaning up after capitalism. Capitalism always dumps on someone, that’s what it does. Some have the luxury of looking the other way, some do not. We are here to stare it down and make change.

We completely removed 400 feet of asphalt driveway and dozens of parking spaces. We tilled 50 yards of compost and 80 yards of leaf litter into the dry dust. We shaped 500 feet of pathway using 30 yards of wood chips, and planted 50 trees, and 30 shrubs. This is especially transformative because of the dearth of life that was obvious here. Underneath this impenetrable petrochemical surface, just as atop it, there was almost zero life. This poisoned and desiccated earth capped by asphalt has not seen a drop of water for 60 years; it is completely inert. This is how we practice for digging on the moon. For the first time in half a century life and water are filtering their way down and things are growing here.

The dump truck full of 5 tons of asphalt, one of several loads removed from Oxygen Alley.

Above ground there are dozens of places for birds to land and loads of native foods for them to eat, hundreds of feet of pathway for people to stroll through, and an acre of surface for a wildflower meadow to grow. Under the surface there will be worms, and microbes, and fungi spreading and bringing the soil back to life. On the once neglected and unnoticed corner of Moran and Kirby there is a giant tilted ring of stones to amaze and focus energy. This ring also demonstrates to me that boulders are more valuable than diamonds. This whole project can help us recalibrate our priorities. Imagine what all of our neighborhoods could look like if we could trade some of the diamonds, hiding in dark drawers, for parks like this with boulders and trees standing in the sun. Let’s imagine that in cities all over the world people will trade their precious diamonds and their conspicuous concentrated personal wealth for vast and beautiful community spaces for life to thrive. 

Hey, we can do this. We are doing this. It’s tons of work, but we have proven precisely what it takes to perform this task. The heavy lifting was done with all volunteer labor, over 300 hours of it. But the financing was not taken care of by a diamond, but by a Neighborhood Beautification Grant from the City of Detroit, and a Tree Planting Grant from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Urban and Community Forestry program and the DTE Energy Foundation. We also have two organizations to thank for their in-kind contributions: the Greening of Detroit for an amazing tree planting, and US Fish and Wildlife Foundation for a native meadow installation . 

21 tons of Michigan boulders delivered first by glaciers then by Paul into this cosmic Ring.

Oxygen Alley is a dream come true, a profound treealization. And we dream it for all of us. It would be one thing if this were just someone’s private estate that provided all this beauty and wildlife value just for its own sake. But this is a public park to be enjoyed by anyone and everyone forever into the future. Lots of parks, not parking lots, right? Parks in perpetuity. We are figuring out more and more every year how to be the Detroit we want to see in the world, to plant the Detroit we want to live in.

KT Morelli leading a Greenspace Healing Tour through the new meandering path through Oxygen Alley. With hard work there is life after asphalt.

This is what we do. Please come out and visit. Come out and be a part of it. If you would like to, and can, please support this work with a donation that will help us ensure that the trees are watered and this essential equipment is kept working. Help us help trees help us. We can only lift boulders together.  We are so grateful for you to even just sit peacefully on a bench if that’s your role. Welcome home!

Kids love boulders. Finn test drives all our boulders before we invite the general public.

Tree planters have big Oxygen footprints. Come out to ArbDetroit and increase your oxygen footprint this Spring. If you plant trees you already know the satisfaction that comes with spreading life, habitat, shade, fresh air, and beauty. We are painting with trees. What a way to generate ripples of good out into a future that extends way beyond us.

With all due respect to those of you who have never planted a tree, I can’t imagine what you must feel like. You probably “ don’t know what you don’t know.” Well, we want you to know. We want every one of us to feel what it is to heal the land, the planet, and be a part of  amplifying shade, oxygen, and elegance. There is one downside though; you will likely be upset that you didn’t do it sooner.

Planting trees is doing a thing that is virtuous into the future, times a million. When I am planting a tree I am doing something that is absolutely net positive. That’s not for me easy to achieve in this complex modern world, especially as a so-called white or off-white guy. It’s very complicated I realize, and confusing to navigate being here in all the ways that we are. We are using resources, creating forever garbage, burning fossil fuels, taking up space that could go to someone else. When you consider all that this tree you plant is going to do for the planet and her beings over the next 200 years, you may begin to feel a slight balancing of your impact. Imagine if we all just planted three trees in “our” yards.

We hear so much about our Carbon Footprint, as we should, but we don’t really hear about our Oxygen Footprint. That’s what I’m talking about- productive and proactive. I promise we will all live better and feel better about the space we take up here, and the space that we leave behind us, as it was before us.

Arbage, not garbage.

As always, Arboretum Detroit offers many opportunities to increase your Oxygen Footprint. We have two events for Earth Day, and a couple more just because it would be humiliating to accept that Earth Day is a single day. It’s Earth Day for you whenever you plant a tree. 

Check out the calendar on our website for dates, times, and locations. We welcome donations here.