Park Address: 3050 Green Road, Ann Arbor MI 48105
Hours and Rules
Open 6 a.m. - midnight with quiet hours starting at 10 p.m. Refer to Chapter 39 of the City of Ann Arbor Code of Ordinances for park regulations and rules. Contact park rentals for policies and rules related to rentals and special uses. Visitors must always refer to posted signage in the park. Smoking is prohibited and dogs must be on leash.
Overview
Sugarbush Park is located in the northeast corner of the city providing 27 acres of accessible trails and activities. View the Ann Arbor Parks and Nature Areas map for location context. You can enter this park from Bluett, Georgetown, Yellowstone and Rumsey. The park has tennis courts, softball, basketball, two play areas, picnic tables, benches, sledding hill, and a natural area. This park features two unique native plants: blue Ash and pawpaws. Some spring wildflowers that you might encounter in Sugarbush Park include bloodroot, May-apple, and both common trillium and uncommon drooping trillium. Later in the spring, you may be lucky enough to find some rarer plants like wood-betony and black snakeroot. There is a paved pathway that provides connections through the mowed park areas. This paved path is on the path clearing snow plow routes during winter. See this map to view the paved and nature path options at Sugarbush Park.
Access Points and Parking
There are no parking lots at Sugarbush, but there is plentiful street parking in the neighborhood around the park. There are many points of access so if you are planning to meet at this park, take a moment to select a specific meeting point.
The park is split into three sections by Yellowstone Drive and Rumsey Drive. The main section of the park, which contains the tennis and basketball courts, is accessible via street parking and sidewalks on Rumsey and Yellowstone. The Yellowstone entrance is also where the entrance to the eastern portion of the park is located, which contains another playground. There is no street parking on Green Rd. The northern section of the park can be accessed via street parking on Cedarbrook Rd, and by path and sidewalk from Rumsey. The northern and eastern sections of the park are accessible on foot and bicycle via Green Road.
The Sugarbush Trail runs through a wooded area within the park. There are entrances to the Sugarbush Trail through the central section of the park, entrances on Yellowstone Dr and Bluett Rd and off of Georgetown Blvd.
Public Transportation
There are bus stops at the park on Green Road. Check out The Ride Guide for more details.
Using a phone? - Click for a GPS Tracker and Wayfinding Map
Amenities
- Walking trails through park. View NAP Sugarbush trail map
- Picnic tables and benches
- Trash receptacles (2)
- Ball diamond
- Sledding hill
- Play structures (2)
Volunteer
There are ongoing and limitless opportunities for volunteering and getting engaged with the Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation Services Unit. GIVE 365 and the seasonal Adopt-a-Park Program offer volunteer opportunities with many levels of commitment. Natural Area Preservation has volunteer opportunities to help protect and restore Ann Arbor’s natural areas and to foster an environmental ethic within the community.
Report a Problem - A2 Fix It
To report any maintenance issues or other problem during your park visit, please report through A2Fix It. Keep in mind that parks are large spaces and A2 Fix It requests can be hard to find without detailed information. When reporting an issue in a park please include location details. There is a details and description section near the end of the request process to help you provide this. Users can also utilize the pin (website) or X (mobile app) feature to provide specific location information inside the park. Please consider including a wide angle photo, which helps staff find and fix the problem.
Gifts and Donations
Information on donating to the parks and the Guide to Giving can be found here. If you have a park improvement idea, a great place to start is through Adopt-a-Park and the proposing a special park project guide. For information on donating a tree through Adopt-a-Park, the tree donation guide can help you get started.
History
Ann Arbor's city parks sit on the ancestral and traditional homelands of several indigenous Native peoples. Read a land acknowledgement from the city and learn more about the early history of the land here.
Sugarbush Park was acquired by the Department of Parks and Recreation in 1968. At the time, the only houses in that area were those on Bromley Court and the US-23 and M-14 sections of Ann Arbor’s highway ring were not yet constructed. There were plans afoot for the construction of several housing developments thereby creating a future need for a neighborhood park. Since then, Sugarbush Park has evolved into a diverse park with play areas, a ball diamond and a natural area.
The natural area of Sugarbush Park extends north from Bluett Road
between Georgetown Boulevard and Yellowstone Drive. This area is
primarily a beech-maple woodland with a somewhat unusual assemblage
of plants including several that are found in no other park in Ann Arbor. If
you enter from one of the two Bluett entrances and follow the trail north,
you will come across a small pawpaw (Asimina triloba) grove on the
east side of the path. The pawpaw is an understory tree that grows to a
height of 10-20 feet. The fruit of this tree is the largest fruit native to
North America and is reminiscent of a short, fat banana. It is considered
desirable by some, although it is often eaten by wildlife before it is ripe
enough to be palatable to human tastes. A second unusual tree found in
the woods of Sugarbush is the four-angled or blue ash (Fraxinus
quadrangulata). It receives these names from the blue dye that was made from its inner bark, and from its twigs which are usually more square than round. We only have this species in one other park in Ann Arbor (Bird Hills). Another notable tree that can be found at Sugarbush is flowering dogwood. These small native trees have large white flowers in the spring.
Plants are not the only interesting things that can be found in Sugarbush Park. In a small vernal pool in the southwest corner of the park, whole communities of invertebrates and amphibians have evolved to use this temporary aquatic habitat. Wood frogs, spring peepers, and other frog species breed in the vernal pool, and red-backed salamanders live in the woods here too. Reach out to Natural Area Preservation for more information on efforts to protect and restore Ann Arbor's natural areas. Click on the links below for Natural Area Preservation newsletter features on Sugarbush:
2000 Park Focus: Sugarbush by Jen Maigret
2017 Park Focus: Sugarbush Park, by Drew Zawacki
Email [email protected] for incorrect/outdated information.
