Walter I Meyers Nursery

In Spring of 2019, The Greening of Detroit began installing our new "Pot in Pot" production style nursery as well as an on-site retention pond to be used for irrigation. This new retention pond will take in 11 acres of surface water and be able to hold over 1,000,000 gallons of storm water. The "Pot in Pot" production style is an innovative nursery technique that allows for easy mobility of the trees as well as maintaining consistent root temperature and soil moisture. We are incredibly excited that we were able to plant our first 775 trees in our Pot in pot nursery this fall.

Nursery History

Walter Meyers Nursery is a 72 acre parcel of land located within Rouge Park. The Greening of Detroit began managing the property through an agreement with the City of Detroit. In 2009 we took over the nursery and beginning in 2010 used a portion of it to help train our workforce development groups in landscaping skills - how to run a brush hog, zero turn mowers, weedwacking, using a chain saw and of course tree trimming skills.

In 2018, The Greening was awarded a grant that provides support for site preparation, utility planning and tree installation which began with the hiring of our new Nursery Manager. The work at Meyers Nursery serves to highlight the many assets of Rouge Park, the largest park in the City of Detroit.

Additionally, we have planted thousands of saplings at the nursery with the help of our Citizen Foresters and hundreds of volunteers who have donated hundreds of hours to the project. These trees are planned to be planted in parks and public spaces in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park.

Heritage Narrative

Over the summer of 2019, we collected personal stories of both Walter Meyers Nursery and Rouge Park. There's been a few local articles since 2009 with small bits of the nursery's history, but nothing focused on the people who were part of it, grew up with it, live or lived near it. Look for those stories on our blog soon!