This is Michigan.
Driving north on a Friday afternoon. The tunnel of autumn trees. The Great Lakes. The forests. The shoreline.
These places belong to all of us. So does the responsibility to care for them.
What care looks like
What's still possible
We Believe Michigan can be Even More Beautiful.
Every mile we drive is a first impression of the town, the state, and the people who live here. Michigan is already extraordinary. It is also full of places nobody has gotten to yet: bare medians, tired entrances, roadsides waiting for someone to plant something.
Not a crisis. An invitation. Michigan deserves our best.
More than a Non Profit.
A Statewide Civic Movement.
A Labor of Love. An Institution.
Interstates, state highways, county roads, rails-to-trails, city streets. If it is a parkway (or next to one, or visible from one) and someone wants to make it more beautiful, MPP will find a way to make it happen. The work is local. The standard is statewide.
Charity begins at home. We serve people in their own neighborhood on the corner they already know, and can enjoy every day after it is finished.
No reinvented wheels
Kiwanis, Rotary, Lions, Scouts, schools and congregations are well-oiled machines already receptive to worthy projects that are feasible and fruitful. We bring them such projects, with the realistic plan and the way to find resources.
Addition and subtraction
Two kinds of work, always: the addition of plantings and landscaping, and the subtraction of litter.
Imagine What's Possible
Native trees. Wildflower shoulders. Entrances a town is proud of. A sponsor's name on a mile that stays beautiful. Children who planted something taller than they are.
How We Make it Happen
01
Bring People
Together
A township, a garden club, a high school, a landscaping crew, a family with a Saturday. We convene them around one place and make showing up easy.
02
Improve Places that Matter
Gateways, corridors, medians, main streets, schoolyards. We start where the most people will see it and the most people can help.
03
Build Something that Lasts
Native species, honest maintenance plans, local stewards named before the first shovel. We plant for the people who will drive past in 2060.
Shovel Ready
Donors are ready for the first small-scale demonstrations. None of this is rocket science — it has been done well in Michigan elsewhere, and we can do it even better and more economically, and for many years to come.
Operation Front Door
Every highway entrance, rail line and port of entry into Michigan. What do our guests see first — billboards, or the state we actually live in?
Native Meadows
Miles of mown shoulder converted to native meadow — cheaper to keep than turf, and alive with what belongs here.
Blight & Squalor Mitigation
Flint, Detroit, Saginaw. Good models already exist and good people are already at work; they would welcome the attention. The funding, then help and the cooperation.
Roadside Robotics
Off-the-shelf robotics and AI applied to litter collection and large-scale planting. Michigan has a world-class technology sector and universities that can improve it, invent it, and build it — and other states will want it.
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
Michigan Department of Transportation · Michigan DNR Forestry · Michigan State University · Michigan Technological University · Michigan Nursery & Landscape Association · Michigan Chamber of Commerce - Fraternal organizations
Our growing informal advisory team includes State Senate and State House members, and professionals in law, insurance, ethics, civil engineering, landscape architecture, forestry, robotics and user experience.
WHERE WE STAND TODAY
Due diligence and information gathering, an advisory team forming, nonprofit formation underway, and committed donors ready to fund the first demonstration projects.
It began on the drive up north to my grandmother's house in Escanaba.
I would put down the book I was reading and just stare as the land rolled by — every season, year after year. When I was old enough to drive, I went looking into all the places I had wondered about. I could not imagine any other state holding a candle to this one, and I was certain every other Michigander felt the same.
I came back to Michigan in 2004 with my California-born wife, bought two and a half acres in Pinckney, raised a garden, planted an orchard, started a family. And I kept driving. I also kept noticing that our roadsides could be better, and that there was garbage beside them.
In 2010 I started asking a question I could not put down: why couldn't someone plant native trees, shrubs and meadows along the roads that millions of us travel every year and take on the litter and squalor in cities like my own hometown, Flint? White pines and red pines. Cedars and tamaracks. Redbuds, serviceberries, willows.
I am skeptical when people talk about a calling, and yet I can find no other word for it. The idea has persisted long enough that I have to follow through and just do it. That is where the Michigan Parkways Project stands today — and why I am asking how you can help.
Deno Prokos, Founder — Pinckney, Michigan
PAENINSULAE NOSTRAE FIANT HORTI PULCHRI
Let our peninsulas be beautiful gardens.
MISSION
To amplify the beauty of Michigan's public roadways.
VISION
As the Michigan Parkways Project expands and endures, it will include and involve all who are already working to beautify Michigan and share our goals of public service — showcasing the natural beauty of our state for residents and visitors alike.
VALUES
Ethical and transparent work in service of the Michigan public. Non-partisan by charter, and structured to remain so.
Built on Trust
Too many good causes lose the public's confidence before they lose their funding. MPP is being built the other way around: the clean model first, the initial plantings second. Utterly apolitical and rigidly non-partisan. Working on what we hold in common is something we already agree on.
1. Transparency
Redundant third-party audits and publicly available records down to the granular level. Every project, every transaction, open to anyone who wants to look.
II. Ethical Stewardship
Waste, fraud and abuse prevented rather than discovered. Verifiable ethical conduct is a structural feature here, not a policy page.
III. Local Partnerships
Volunteers where volunteers fit, and fair paid work for reliable and licensed professional Michigan landscapers. Help the people already helping — no turf battles.
IV. Long-Term Thinking
An institution meant to grow and thrive over decades — results first, on a sensible budget. No high salaries for "raising awareness".
There's a Place for Everyone
You do not need money to belong to this. You need an afternoon, a skill, a truck, a classroom, a corner you drive past every day.
Residents
Adopt that place you drive right past. You know you want to!
Students
Service hours that stay planted.
Businesses
Sponsor a corridor, freeway entrance or exit, or any place you want to improve - including near your own business
Municipalities
Bring us a place to fix, we use a model that invites giving and participation
Schools
Plant a living classroom. Learn the rich variety of our native flora.
Churches
Service Clubs
Landscapers
Families
Retirees
Volunteers from a congregation, one Saturday afternoon. Memories you will see regularly for years. What grows from a mustard seed?
Enlarge your Adopt-a Highway project. Adopt a freeway entrance. Improve your town or neighborhood one tree at a time.
Lend a crew and a standard.
Plant something your children and grandchildren can point to for years.
The most reliable hands we have.
