What We Do
Strategic Landscapes
Detroit has more vacant land than probably any other city in the United States. This gives us the opportunity to make Detroit a greener, healthier urban center. Green Infrastructure is a term used to describe the network of planned and managed green spaces which work together to benefit a community’s social, economic and environmental health.
The Greening of Detroit’s scope has grown from organized tree and shrub planting projects in parks and along city streets to include broad-scale projects specifically designed to maximize benefits to the people living in the neighborhoods we serve. Our green infrastructure projects add significant economic value to the city of Detroit by reducing stormwater runoff, cleaning toxic soil, and improving air quality and real estate values.
We work with hundreds of community partners in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park to improve parks, beautify neighborhoods and create useful landscapes from vacant land. We continue to affect long-term planning for greening and revitalization in Detroit by lending a hand and offering our expertise to government agencies and corporations throughout the city. Find out more
Urban Agriculture
Our urban gardening and agriculture programs play a key role in Detroit’s blossoming green movement. Every year, the garden resource program contributes farming resources and educational opportunities to over 15,000 urban gardeners, supporting over a thousand gardens in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park.
For more information, please contact Lionel Bradford, vice president for operations, at lionel.bradford@greeningofdetroit.com.
Education
We believe in hands-on learning. By using the outdoors as classroom laboratories, students learn from highly skilled teachers who have gone through our extensive life science training program and workshops. The students often participate in environmental service projects where they have a chance to leave a thumbprint in their neighborhood and larger community. And in the summer we continue our mission by hosting Camp Greening for kids to unearth nature and explore the outdoors.
In addition, The Greening has a Citizen Forestry program for adult volunteers. In its second year, we trained 61 individuals to assist Greening Foresters at local tree planting events by training citizens in Volunteer Management, Community Engagement, Tree Identification and Tree Maintenance to lead the volunteer teams during neighborhood tree-planting events.
For more information about our education programs, please contact Kristin Martinez at kristin@greeningofdetroit.com
Workforce Development: Green Jobs
We take an active role in training Detroit youth and adults for green jobs in forestry, agriculture and landscaping… Our workforce development program provides both certification and hands-on job training for more than 120 adults annually. And every summer we employ more than 200 young people on planting projects.
For more information, please contact Devon Buskin at devon@greeningofdetroit.com