Buckthorn Removal Singles Club is a club focused on environmental and community restoration. The group is open to adults of all ages, genders, and sexualities.


Much as the capitalist landscape has lead to natural spaces which are polluted, non-diverse, eroding, and choked by invasive species; capitalist management of our social environment has resulted in an online dating scene which is toxic, transactional, and unrooted in community. With online dating accounting for over 50% of new relationships (2025) and all other methods of meeting people in quick decline, it can begin to feel taboo to get friends to set you up on a date or ask out a stranger in public. The aim of this group is to bring people together in community over shared values and provide an alternative to the monoculture of online dating, where friendships and relationships can grow rooted in the nourishing soil of community care.

MPLS Buckthorn Removal Singles Club is currently working on removing buckthorn from sections of East River Trail using non-chemical methods. The trail set on one side by the Mississippi River and the other by sedimentary cliffs, offers a refuge for humans and wildlife alike from the noise of city life. This patch of wilderness in the heart of the city is facing infestation by buckthorn who’s rampant growth threatens to transform a diverse forest into:



a monolithic hedge. Note how deep shadows form below the mature hedge. With its dense and dark understory young trees have trouble starting up in a buckthorn hedge, and as old trees die, young ones cannot take their place. Though the majestic cottonwoods which dominate this forrest are long-lived, if buckthorn is allowed to grow unchecked, seedlings will fail to mature and their majestic canopy may not survive past the current generation of trees.

Alternatively, a short walk away along the trail where buckthorn has not yet spread the forest looks a little different:



Here a diversity of plants with varied heights and sparser spacing allow for dappled sunlight to reach all the way to the forrest floor.