A gust of fresh air has come, literally, to
downtown Ypsilanti. City personnel and a cadre of volunteers, some from the Michigan Works young adult training program, have just finished planting the first installment of a tree nursery on the Water Street parcel.
The 2-4 acre nursery, situated on the Huron River in the old Gilbert Park, now contains 350 new young trees. Another planting will be done this fall to bring the total to about 600-800 trees by the end of the year, says Ypsilanti City Planner Teresa Gillotti.
The trees are planted in fabric grow bags so they can be moved to other areas of the city as and when development occurs on the site, Gillotti says. About half of the specimens in Ypsilanti's public tree stock are middle-aged and older, according to a recently completed tree inventory.
"So the idea is that we're growing new stock sort of cheaply that will eventually get of size and then they'll be transplanted as part of the street tree network or as parks trees," she explains.
No new maples are planned as they already comprise over half of the city's canopy. Instead, the new stock is a mix of shagbark hickory, hackberry, red oak, white oak, tulip tree, scarlet oak, white pine, blue spruce, and white spruce varieties.
"Lots of folks are interested in volunteering, including a bunch of EMU students, residents, and neighborhood people," Gillotti says of the effort. "So we're really excited that it's kind of a neat combination of folks in the community that are coming out to help us establish the nursery, and ultimately I think we're going to have a group of volunteers that help to maintain and keep an eye on it as well."
Source: Teresa Gillotti, Ypsilanti city planner
Writer: Tanya Muzumdar
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