Detroit lost more street trees than almost any American city — Dutch elm disease, then abandonment — but Midtown kept its institutional canopy: the DIA’s lawn oaks, Wayne State’s quads, the library’s formal rows. The Greening of Detroit’s replanting campaign has put 130,000 trees back, and the Cass Corridor’s young honey locusts are just now starting to matter.
These picks run the anchor institutions and the Dequindre Cut — the sunken rail-trail whose walls throw reliable shadow even where the plantings are young.