This past spring, the city of Rochester became home to a ‘micro forest,’ a dense grove of trees and shrubs planted in an area as small as 1,000 square feet. 

The micro forestry concept began in Japan and aims to support birds, insects, and other pollinators in heavily urbanized communities. Specifically helping to remediate degraded soil caused by human development. 

Rochester City Council member Marilyn Trent spearheaded the project with the help of volunteers, arborists, and city officials. 

“The response from the community was absolutely phenomenal,” she says. 

Trent based Rochester’s micro forest on the famous Miyawaki method of planting native plants, trees and shrubs thirty times as dense as usual, a very different method of helping water mitigation, pollinator species support, and carbon capture than re-foresting or rewilding land. “We’re not trying to replicate a forest,” Trent adds.  

Trent says other cities in metro Detroit have reached out with interest in replicating the project in their communities. With one growing season successfully over, she says the biggest lesson so far is be prepared to water, water, water. 

“Keep it watered…that is one thing. And thank goodness for the DPW [Department of Public Works] when the drought starts coming in July or August, you have to keep it watered,” she says.

This story is a part of WDET’s Detroit Tree Canopy Project

Detroit Outdoors has taken a group of students and teachers to Yosemite National Park for the second time.

The Detroit to Gloryland journey is designed to introduce youth to outdoor activities like camping and rock climbing and pick up on some history.

The group travels to Yosemite in late July so they are in there during National Buffalo Soldier Day, and within reach of the park system’s expert on the history of Buffalo Soldiers in the park.

Shelton Johnson is a native Detroiter, an alum of Cass Technical High School and a park ranger. He has worked to collect the narratives of the Black and other non-white soldiers who served as Yosemite’s first rangers and share their individual and collective stories.

WDET’s Sascha Raiyn got to travel with the students both years. You can hear stories from the first Detroit to Gloryland trip and learn more about Shelton Johnson in 2024 here.

‘Gloryland’ veterans speak

It was Cass Tech High School Junior Tiffany Orr’s first-time camping and first-time in Yosemite. She interviewed the three students who came on the trip for a second time: Jaiden Nedd, Cameron Thomas and Arcia Quinn.

Expressing Yosemite: a poet’s guide to being in nature

Poet and author Jacqueline Suskind traveled with the students. Suskind’s work focuses on her relationship to nature – and on teaching others to explore their own relationships to nature — through writing.

Students had an inside guide to Yosemite this year

Robel Fessehatzion is a landscape photographer who works at and with Yosemite National Park.

He met the students who traveled from Detroit to Yosemite on the 2024 trip.

This year, Fessehatzion introduced the students to the people, places and history that shape his relationship to Yosemite.

He also gave them a little lesson in landscape photography.

A look at how Detroit Outdoors gets it done

Moving more than 20 people across the country to camp — many for the first time — is a big undertaking. We take a look at the logisitcs of the trip.

‘Gloryland’ first-timers speak

Sascha Raiyn gave her recorder to Pershing student Eva Effinger and Hamtramck High grad Nora Algahaim. They interviewed each other — on the one night the campers had very loud neighbors. They talked about their first camping experience and starting the trip not feeling so well.

To learn more and see photos of the experience, check out the Detroit Outdoors Instagram account.