Volunteers spruce up Pitchford Park in Macomb Twp.

MACOMB TOWNSHIP — As the landscape grows in at Macomb Township’s newest park, volunteers spent the morning hours of Arbor Day on April 26 planting trees in the southern end of Pitchford Park as the first step of growing a hummingbird garden.

Volunteers began around 9 a.m., planting crabapple, serviceberry, redbud, red oak and witch hazel trees along with a number of shrubs including lilac, spicebush and butterfly bush. Work on the garden will continue later in May as over 100 hummingbird-friendly perennials are scheduled to be planted.

“When people are walking on the trails, there’s this parcel of land and we wanted to do something that would increase biodiversity and also beautifying, and so we decided to do a hummingbird habitat and a pollinator garden,” said Nethanya Fonseka, a Macomb Township resident and the founder of the tree planting project Plant it Forward.

While Arbor Day plantings in the United States can be traced back to April 10, 1872, when Nebraska newspaper editor J. Sterling Morton promoted the first edition of the tree planting celebration, the seeds for Macomb Township’s planting were sown in 2023.

“This whole process started a year ago when Nethanya wanted to plant tree seedlings throughout Macomb Township public parks and public grounds,” Macomb Township Treasurer Leon Drolet said. “Last year we planted 100 seedlings that she spearheaded, but she didn’t stop being involved.”

Nethnaya — who organized to plant 100 carbon-capturing poplar trees in 2023 under the Plant It Forward banner — and her mother, Ramila, continued to work on projects around the township and linked up with master gardener and fellow township resident Kathi Pipenbrock. The trio first got to work planning out a historical garden around the recently relocated old township hall.

“Recently, a young woman named Jennifer Ott, who owns a landscape design company in the area, started showing up at the office and it all just became something of an informal garden group,” Drolet said.

With the informal group of resident gardeners formed and in close contact with the township, opportunity arose. In September 2023, Canadian National Railway provided the township with a $3,000 grant to build a butterfly garden in a retention pond at Pitchford Park. Over time the idea changed in scope as the gardeners got involved, eventually becoming the hummingbird garden it is today.

“It turns out that the more people you have involved in planning or developing a community asset, the more good ideas get brought to the surface,” Drolet said. “I think it’s just as the park came together it was a coincidence to some degree that this enthusiastic gardening group was coming together, and when the two meet good things happen.”

While the volunteers have worked on several township projects already and other opportunities with the township are set to arise, Drolet says whether the volunteers’ involvement in these future projects is entirely their decision.

“I think (other plantings in the townships) depends on if other residents want to participate, because I personally don’t want to see too much heaped onto a small group that has already enthusiastically embraced these opportunities,” Drolet said. “If other residents want to get involved, that would be great and we would certainly then look to other opportunities in (Macomb) Corners Park, in Waldenburg Park, in Lucido Park and other places where we can focus on making those places a little bit more beautiful, a little bit more valuable to wildlife and a little bit more enjoyable for our residents.”

Of course, the volunteers are plenty busy on their own terms. Nethanya organized a cleanup of Waldenburg Park on Earth Day (April 22) with International Academy of Macomb students and is working on gardens in Clinton Township and Sterling Heights, while Ott runs the landscaping company My Thyme Gardens.