East Warren Filter Forest
A seven-parcel tree planting and conservation project connecting to Patiense Grove on Warren ave, at the South end of the Arboretum.
We began this May with an Earth Day tree planting event in collaboration with Clear the Air, on a parcel donated by neighbors April and James Worden. Above is Filter Forest in the summer of 2025, after the tree planting. Patiense Grove is in the center, where the trees are concentrated.
The adjacent lots are currently vacant parcels. Some have volunteer forests on them that will be cleaned of trash and invasives, and others are covered with invasive grass and weeds, which will be replaced with a diversity of 100 trees and shrubs along with native meadow areas.
The park will focus on evergreen and understory trees to create a full-time year-round vegetative buffer from the sight lines, pollution and noise of Warren ave.
We held two tree plantings this fall with dozens of volunteers from the neighborhood and elsewhere, and we got fifty trees and shrubs in the ground! We found the soil to be full of rubble and trash, so, like other Arboretum Detroit parks, this one also features a stupa.
We hope that Filter Forest will be an important outdoor venue for educational opportunities centering around air quality.
Support for this project comes from the Wright Foundation for Sustainability and Innovation, the Conservation Fund, and the DTE Energy Foundation.