Where the next two years will take us

We have some great news! The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has awarded us a grant to do our next project. Arboretum Detroit is very excited to announce a native plant restoration project in partnership with Detroit Future City, and NFWF.

This is a preliminary design for the new park on the corner of Palmer and Elmwood.

We will be working with local partners Detroit Audubon, Singing Tree, US Fish and Wildlife, Fungi Freights, and hopefully you, to bring a native meadow and 200 native trees to 1.3 acres of vacant land on Palmer between Elmwood and Moran. This park will connect to several greenspaces in the community and be a green getaway for all neighbors, especially the residents of the adjacent health and rehabilitation center. We hope to have many of our amazing volunteers and supporters be a part of this project over the next 18 months. See below for work days and stay tuned for workshops that you can be a part of.

We will begin by clearing the existing forest of garbage as well as invasive trees and plants. Singing Tree, the local tree whisperers, will assist in identification and removal. It will be sad to cut any trees- even Ailanthus and Siberian Elm are currently providing shade and habitat. However, we will leave plenty of larger trees, and plant trees like Oaks, Sweet Gums, Black Gums, Hackberries, Sugar Maples, Cedars and many other natives that will provide food and shelter better suited to the native animal population. The park will be a native tree showcase, with 20 different species. Fungi Freights will run mushroom-related workshops on site and introduce mycorrhiza with the newly planted trees so they can quickly establish their symbiotic networks and thrive. Detroit Audubon will help prepare the ground and seed it with a Native Wildflower mix donated by US Fish and Wildlife  Service. A beautiful meadow (see Callahan Bird Park) under and around the trees will provide shelter and food source for native and migrating birds. Detroit Audubon will also offer birding workshops.

This is a federal grant that requires significant in-kind donations and volunteer engagement. Our partners have offered generous discounts on their services, donating time and resources to make this project happen - we are extremely grateful to them. If you would like to contribute as well, here’s how: 

• Come to workdays - put your hands to work with us. We are looking to fulfill our requirement of 150 volunteer hours. There will be fun, food, and refreshments. You can see the dates and times here and sign up to receive email reminders.

• Spread the word - tell friends you think might have time and energy to create a native forest park in the city.

• Donate to us- with your financial support we can hire more people and pay them fairly. contributions also buy tools, supplies for our workdays, and help maintain our parks.

• Let us know- please offer your wisdom to this project. Let us know what a native landscape means to you.

• Connect us to Indigenous friends who may have an interest in helping guide such a project. We value all of your knowledge and are especially interested in indigenous perspectives and wisdom on these plants and this land.

Land Acknowledgement in progress: We acknowledge that Arboretum Detroit and the Poletown neighborhood have the privilege of existing and planting on unceded land originally stewarded by Niswi Ishkodewan Anishinaabeg: The Three Fires People who are Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi along with their neighbors the Seneca, Delaware, Shawnee and Wyandot nations. We wish to aid in reconnecting, Waawiiyaataanong, to its rightful heirs and stewards: the native peoples and plants of this place. We acknowledge and understand that these plants and people have existed and gathered on this land for much longer than the plants, peoples, and systems that now obscure it.

This project aims to begin the healing of the traumatized landscape. In turn we hope that the project will bring healing to all who participate. We recognize that this is unceded territory of the first nations who thrived here and are the original stewards of this land. Waawiyaatanong (aka Detroit) has been a central meeting place for Great Lakes Indigenous peoples including the Anishinaabe: Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi. Of course settler colonization meant the destruction of the native landscape, people, and ways of life here. Colonization has meant clear cutting, bulldozing, pouring of concrete, and the gridding of the landscape into city blocks.

With this project we consider deeply what it means to heal a small piece of land by returning many of the native trees and plants that were almost eradicated from this mowed and paved world. Let us hear and learn the original names and uses of these plants from those who know. Let us hone our intercultural competency and recognize the value of Indigenous Knowledge. Let us contribute our work as an offering to the Earth, and a declaration to the First Nations that we recognize indigenous wisdom and are willing to listen to the original stewards of this land and to the landscape herself.

How awesome it will feel to relieve a piece of this land of garbage and trauma. How amazing it will feel to seed the landscape with life and watch it grow into a meadow and a forest. We cannot erase the trauma and abuse of this land and her people, but we can make a better way forward for the Earth, our future with her, and with the original people of this land.

The greatest technology we have to fight the climate emergency caused by the western way of life is indigenous wisdom. It is my hope that people who work on and visit this park will consider this truth and reckon with it in ourselves.

This Report tells you at a glance what we were up to in our first two years: between February 2019 and February 2021. You can also find it on the website under the About tab. Thank you for being a part of it all!

What are these cylindrical forms of rubble that are rising from the arboretum? Stupas?

As defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica a Stupa is a Buddhist commemorative monument usually housing sacred relics associated with the Buddha or other saintly persons. This makes sense in the way that these relics are the skeletons of the houses that have sacrificed themselves to the project of returning the landscape to trees and plants, rewilding, native habitat restoration. I like to think of this work as peeling back the layer of colonial settlement to reveal what is truly here under this concrete and sod. I mean what came before and can be here again.

Planting trees in Detroit is a little different than planting trees in most other places. I have not yet planted a tree on the moon, but I imagine it bears some similarity to planting a tree here in Detroit. This blend of clay, concrete, and other assorted detritus feels lunar when translated through the vibrations of my shovel. Digging a hole is creating space. In some places this means removing soil. In Detroit this means removing bricks, rubble, garbage, and other debris from the depression into which you would like to plant the tree. This is the first step. We have to dig the hole extra deep for drainage because a tree planted in a clay bowl will die from root rot due to the lack of oxygen (unless she’s a Cypress in which case she will make knees of her roots that will rise above the soil line to breathe for her). So, we dig the hole an extra 6-12 inches deep and then bring in the compost and topsoil. Now we have what amounts to a giant pot really to plant into. This will encourage good growth for the first year or two, but then of course the roots hit the walls and face the reality that they are somewhat confined and that life is not quite as easy as it seemed. We do not want this.

This is one of the reasons we are planting our trees in groups, clusters, and groves. If we create several of these depressions in close enough proximity to each other the trees can break through and join forces. By adding Mycorrhizal fungi to each hole we are encouraging a network to form. This fungi is essential for tree growth and tree cooperation. It is the hallmark of healthy soil. It takes years, decades, centuries to establish a proper community. Under the oldest forests are networks of mycelium that would circle the Earth hundreds of times. By introducing this fungi to our planting holes we get the relationship started. What they really love is a few hundred years of undisturbed fallen leaves. This is where soil is made, where Mycorrhizae flourish.

Mycorrhizae exist in symbiosis with the trees, and act as a communication and delivery system for the roots. The fungi deliver sugars from one tree to another across the forest network. This is how trees that get no sunlight can stay alive in the understory for decades, or how the stump of a tree cut down a hundred years ago can still be alive today with no trunk or branches. The stump and the massive network of roots established over centuries is too valuable for the other trees to let go of. This mother tree was, and continues to be, the hub of this forest network. The Mycorrhizae will also take a bit of the sugar off the top in exchange for delivery services. 

In addition to sugars delivery the Mycorrhizae give the trees something that they cannot get at on their own: minerals. Trees cannot eat rock, but Mycorrhizal fungi can. They slowly eat away the rock and pass the mineral wealth to the tree roots through the hyphae, or root tips. The fungi actually penetrate the root hairs- this is where the exchanges are made. The only analogy I can think of is a kiss. We want to encourage lots of this. My point is that by planting a grove of trees we can improve the soil and encourage this unseen layer of life. When we see street trees planted in boxes between slabs of sidewalk we understand that this tree is very alone. There is no other to exchange anything with. I do not know if a tree without companions knows what she is missing but I do know that her health and longevity will be much greater with the support of other trees and fungi to share life with; that’s objective fact.

That’s a long way from the stupas I began with. Well, we are taking all of the concrete that we are breaking our shovels and shoulders and backs on and displaying them among the trees of the arboretum so that visitors can understand what we are doing when we plant trees in Detroit’s vacant lots. On one hand it is a great luxury that we Detroiters have the space to make our gardens, forests, and dreams come true. While on the other hand we are paying the DLBA and their brokers so that we can clean up the mess that the city has made over the past 50 years. We are not actually buying land; we are buying space in which to create land. We are buying a substrate of garbage and fill dirt onto which we can build the soil onto which to build our dreams. So, if it seems real dreamy to grow Detroit, you’re right- it is a dream come true, but it takes a lot more than meets the eye. Just like most of the forest is happening below our feet out of our view, most of the arboretum is happening before the tree ever gets into the hole.