Participate
Carbocene’s Oakland greenhouse, nursery, and field site are places to work with living plants, biochar, soil, and ecological questions. Beyond Oakland, schoolyards, public parks, farms, and restoration landscapes show how engineered trees can connect research with education and long-term stewardship.
Public participation is part of the institution’s scientific life: people can contribute through practical activity grounded in ongoing projects, scientific collaboration, field relationships, documentation, and careful observation over time.
No laboratory or gardening background is required. Activities are structured so newcomers and experienced contributors can work alongside one another.
Biopunk Greenhouse
Spend an afternoon inside Carbocene’s working Oakland greenhouse and field site. Participants propagate plants, make biochar, care for a living research collection, and explore how plant biotechnology can be practiced in an independent research setting alongside conventional scientific institutions.
Each gathering combines teaching, discussion, and practical work based on what the plants and projects need that week. The public calendar is the current source for dates and registration.
Community & landscapes
A schoolyard, public park, community farm, or restoration landscape can become a place where education, stewardship, and observations accumulate around a living tree. Together, these places show how plant biotechnology can enter particular landscapes and remain available for learning over time.
PIEDMONT AVENUE ELEMENTARY — OAKLAND | ESTABLISHED
A photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid aspen from the Baboon event lineage grows in the schoolyard at Piedmont Avenue Elementary. The tree is distinct from Deer. Its setting gives students and teachers an opportunity to observe growth, pruning, regrowth, and carbon accumulation across years.
The dated chronology, pruning record, and measurements remain on the Research page.
INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF MACOMB — MICHIGAN | 2023 PREDECESSOR PROGRAM
Students from the International Academy of Macomb worked with Macomb Township to plant 100 photosynthesis-enhanced aspens in public parks. The student-led planting belonged to the earlier Living Carbon program.
The project illustrates how schools and public landscapes can bring young people into practical environmental work while creating places where living trees may be observed over time.
TAYLOR YARD — LOS ANGELES | EARLIER FIELD RECORD
In the earlier Living Carbon program, about 25 photosynthesis-enhanced poplars were planted on roughly half an acre of former rail and industrial land beside the Los Angeles River. The planting connected engineered trees with ecological restoration and phytoremediation questions; the landscape was later used for biodiversity monitoring.
As a historical field record, the planting shows the kinds of long-term scientific and stewardship questions that begin when engineered plants leave the greenhouse.
GILL TRACT COMMUNITY FARM — ALBANY | CURRENT
Carbocene trees are growing at Gill Tract Community Farm in Albany, a community-managed urban farm combining agroecological research, cultivation, public education, and food justice.
BAY AREA MAKERFARM — ALAMEDA | PLANNED
Bay Area Makerfarm combines regenerative agriculture with community workshops, youth activities, repair clinics, and shared tools. Carbocene is planning a tree planting there.
Community biology
Practical participation includes stewardship, documentation, biosafety, and scientific responsibility.
Botanists, plant scientists, DIY biologists, biohackers, and independent biological researchers.
Gardeners, restoration practitioners, artists, and builders working with wood, fibers, pigments, or biomaterials.
Students and early-career researchers looking for practical experience with living systems.
Stewardship placements
A limited number of plants may be available through separately arranged nonprofit research, education, conservation, field observation, or stewardship placements.
Distributed placements preserve biological time, spread custodial risk, and create opportunities for long-term observation. Availability depends on the plant line, intended use, receiving person or institution, and applicable contractual, regulatory, biosafety, documentation, and ecological requirements.
Scientific collaboration
Carbocene hosts visiting teams from nonprofit biotechnology, conservation technology, and mission-driven research organizations. Visits compare stewardship of living research collections, scientific questions, and possible work across institutions.
Carbocene is interested in collaborations involving plant transformation, tissue culture and regeneration, plant physiology, greenhouse and field evaluation, forestry and restoration, material testing, biochar, aspen coppice systems, and ecological monitoring.
Collaborative work is developed with clear terms for plant custody, intellectual property, publication, funding, responsibilities, and long-term stewardship.
Historical field provenance
If you hosted or worked with photosynthesis-enhanced poplar from the earlier program, Carbocene would like to hear from you. Historical planting information, photographs, measurements, and current survival observations can help reconstruct a distributed field record whose scientific value increases with time.
Please share only information you are permitted to share. Do not send plant material or confidential records. Any further measurement, sampling, propagation, or site work would be undertaken only after the relevant permissions and material rights are established.
Institutional participation
Carbocene welcomes scientific partners, field sites, greenhouse and propagation capacity, material testing, landholders, funders, foundations, family offices, and other organizations able to support larger biological programs.
If you know a person or institution that should understand Carbocene’s work, a direct introduction can be consequential.
Choose a next step
Join a public greenhouse session, propose scientific work, discuss a stewardship or field site, share a historical record, or make an institutional introduction.