Neighborhood Tree Nursery

The “Win-Win Tree Program”

Address: 3300 Farnsworth, Detroit, MI 48211

This Nursery is a resource for Detroit residents. The trees are not for sale, but rather, for trade. In exchange for helping care for them, residents can select a few to plant in their own yards.

We write grants each year to help us purchase the saplings. Neighbors and Program participants help with planting them in the Nursery, watering and weeding them, and planting them for those of us who need help. This way, a few hours of labor can turn into a tree in your yard that would cost hundreds of dollars to purchase. And in the meantime, you can cultivate relationships to human and non-human living beings, and contribute to all of our health.

Our 2025 Spring Win-Win Workday/Tree Pickup Date is Saturday, April 19th, 3 - 6pm. See Event listing for details and registration.

Please note that you will dig out your own tree and plant it at home yourself. We provide the trees, and support you with our knowledge of how to care for trees for best success. We do have volunteers who have offered to help neighbors with disabilities plant their trees, and we are happy to connect you with them.

SPring 2025 available tree species:

Small bare root trees:

White Flowering Dogwood

Concolor Fir

Witch-Hazel

Yellow Birch

White Cedar

Small Nursery trees to dig out:

Red Pine

White Pine

Douglas Fir

The rows in the Nursery are oriented on a true north / south axis to add both aesthetic interest and tangible reminder of cardinal directions. This consciousness is very important when planting gardens, trees, and designing buildings. However, the standard grid of the city does not help us understand where the cardinal directions are. This orientation for the nursery helps us educate about these directions and their implications for those who plant the trees that graduate from the nursery. This also offers a more natural feng shui for entering the nursery. The nursery opens up to the intersection at an angle much softer than a sharp 90 degrees that the grid layout demands; it’s a psychological break from these confines for us and for the trees. The trees are already salty about having to spend years in straight rows. They teach us with the form of their crowns, branches, and roots that something more organic suits them.

At the back of the nursery, placed as a visual invitation to enter the space, is a mural of Kenyan environmental superhero Wangari Maathai, painted by local artist Jozie Bullard.

Arbor Vitae planted by neighbors — Photo by Garrett MacLean

We are keeping three fifty year old Silver Maples and two fifteen year old Elm trees in the nursery by the alley because they were here first, and they offer some relief from the full sun that could be too much stress for the young trees. There are also some permanent fixtures planted in the nursery offering a park-like welcome to the 15 foot set-back as well as offering some shade. These are five River Birches, six Apollo Maples and a handful of Cedars, Tuliptrees and Hickories.