MANISTEE COUNTY — When you think of sequoia trees, Detroit is probably the last place you think of, but not anymore, thanks to an ancient tree project here in northern Michigan.
For the last ten years, Archangel Ancient Tree Archive in Manistee County’s Copemish has been taking clones of the trees to lots in the heart of the Poletown East Neighborhood in Detroit.
In 10 year the trees have already reached 12 feet in height. Nature’s behemoths have been gradually being brought into the city over the last 10 years, with over 200 trees now calling it home.
Archangel Ancient Tree Archive Co-Founder David Milarch picked Detroit because he grew up there, and wanted the trees to help clean up the environment, adding “The soil there, almost everything there is dead from pollution, from, from neglect and things. So we said, what a better place to plan the world’s first all growth giant sequoia forest than an inner city Detroit with inner city Detroit children. ”
When David first announced his plans to clone 3,000 year old trees 12 years ago, he was told that was impossible, but that didn’t stop him.
He tells us “We found, Stag and Waterfall, two of the largest older sequoias in the world...And we worked for two years and voila, we had success. ”
After the success, they built their tissue culture lab, with the goal to mass produce sequoias trees and reforest the planet, something that has never been done.
And it worked.
Detroit is the non-profits starting point, with plans to visit Oakland, California next, as they focus on cities with compromised environment’s to help the youth and pay it forward.
David has also taken steps to make sure that once he and his team are gone, the trees will still thrive.
He says “So we empower those kids by teaching them how to clone the trees, how to grow the trees back from the school. And that’s what we did in Detroit. So when we left Detroit, those children are educated on how to do it. They not only planted the trees, they learned how to grow the trees.”