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Hantz woodlands 3rd annual planting day 2016
Hantz Woodlands is an urban tree farm on the east side of Detroit. Plans for it were approved 5-4 by the Detroit city council in October 2013. The project has purchased more than 1,500 vacant city-owned lots, totaling more than 140 acres, and has razed the many abandoned homes in the area to make way for a mile-square hardwood tree farm. The tree farm project is being developed by Hantz Farms, a division of Hantz Group. It would be the largest urban tree farm in the U.S.
Contents
Hantz woodlands
Planting projects
On May 17, 2014, the first community tree planting event drew out over 1,000 volunteers to help plant 15,000 maple and oak saplings on 20 acres at Hantz Woodlands.
October 15, 2014, 150 mature sugar maple trees, 20 feet high, were trucked to Detroit from Michigan and New York, and planted at Hantz farms, representing an investment of about $100,000. "I struggle to find the right words," says Keith Alexander, the Oxford-based tree broker who located 150 sugar maples in Michigan and New York that were straight enough and tall enough to meet Hantz's specifications. "I've planted street trees in Detroit, but never a woods, an actual urban forest. It's inspiring."
On May 9, 2015, the second community tree planting volunteers planted 5,000, 4-6 foot tall tulip poplar trees. The holes will once again be pre-dug and prepared for planting. Volunteers will only have to put the tree in the hole and cover it with dirt. Participants are asked to bring shovels, as equipment is limited. The plan is to grow the trees for about 10 years, over five acres, in tight rows, causing them to grow taller and straighter, and then "thin" them by transplanting some to other open lots.
On May 7, 2016, the third annual tree planting event took place. Hantz Woodlands planted about 3,000 six-foot-tall sugar maples on about 50 lots in the project area, said Mike Score, president of the Hantz Woodlands. Besides planting trees, the Hantz operation has cleared away brush and debris from its parcels, demolished blighted buildings, and mowed the grass on its lots.
Reception
The project's 2013 agreement with the city of Detroit called for the demolition of 50 vacant city-owned structures, planting of 15,000 trees, and general maintenance and upkeep of the district properties. One year later, in December 2014, Detroit mayor Mike Duggan presented the company with a certificate of completion. The project has been called an "exemplary way to clean up abandoned urban land".
Some urban farming activists, citing the low price paid for the land, contend that the city is privileging large development projects. However, as of summer of 2016 the city had still not completed the sale to Hantz of several hundred properties within the Woodlands project area, and as a result these properties remain overgrown and blighted.