Tiny Forests

What is a tiny forest?

A tiny forest is small area of densely packed, fast growing native trees.

The idea is for a tiny forest, sometimes known as a mini forest or micro forest, to transform a small urban barren plot into one packed with dense vegetation, trees and complex ecosystems. They can be planted anywhere there is the space available – next to a road, at a school, in a park, on brownfield land or in a back garden.

There are three main functions of a tiny forest:

  1. To halt the loss of local biodiversity in urban areas
  2. Decrease the impacts of climate change
  3. Increase the frequency of nature in urban areas for people to enjoy and appreciate

As the name suggests, the plot doesn’t have to be big to fit in a tiny forest. An area the size of a tennis court, roughly 200m2 is perfect. This sized space can pack in around 600 trees.

With 2 to 7 trees per square meter, the density of a tiny forest is much greater than normal forests. But there’s still room for the trees to grow and it’s been shown to work at thousands of locations across the worlds.

The mini forests aim to mimic natural forests by having a good mix of tree species – as many as 40 or more different species can be found in the small plot. The prevalence of green vegetation means a tiny forest can have 30 times more green surface area than a meadow.

Not only is a tiny forest great for carbon dioxide capture, it enhances local biodiversity and encourages community engagement during the planting of one and afterwards.

I think you’ll agree that the idea would result in something infinitely more beneficial and enriching to the environment and local people than a barren plot of land.

Major benefits of a tiny forest

There really are a lot of benefits associated with planting a tiny forest in an urban or city environment. Benefits include:

  • Rapid growth – up to 5 times faster than traditional single species tree planting schemes
  • Enhanced biodiversity – a tiny forest can attract 500 species of animals and plants on top of those planted within the first 3 years
  • Carbon dioxide absorption – the fast-growing mini forest can capture up to 30 times more CO2 than traditional tree planting operations after 4 years
  • Reduced air pollution – trees are natural filters and help to improve local air quality
  • Acoustic buffering – a tiny forest can provide up to 30 times better noise reduction
  • More resilient climate – a tiny forest can process 30,000 liters of rainfall helping to reduce the risk of local flooding and may even counter the heat island affect in cities
  • Improve mental health – many studies have shown the link between green spaces and enhanced feelings of long-term well being.

In the Netherlands, where the concept of tiny forests has been readily incorporated, researchers at Wageningen Environmental Research studied a mini forest planted in 2017 over the course of a year. They found that they housed greater levels of biodiversity, both in species number and individuals, that nearby native forests.

What is a Miyawaki forest?

Miyawaki forests is another name for tiny forests.

This name comes from Japanese botanist and plant expert, Akira Miyawaki, who specialises in the study of natural forests and the restoration of natural vegetation and native forests on barren land.  

The concept of a Miyawaki forest was first introduced by Akira Miyawaki after his work on woodland management in the 1970s and 1980s.

Miyawaki showed that rapid restoration of tree cover on poor quality ground was possible with his method of planting native tree species more densely together than usual and equipping them with mycorrhiza fungi on the root system. The result was a fast-growing small forest, with high biological diversity and good ecological resistance.

Use of the Miyawaki method to create tiny forests

The success of the Miyawaki method evolved to form the basis of the tiny forest concept, with the aim of increasing green areas and forest cover in urban areas.

Also playing a substantial role in the creation of tiny forests was Shubhendu Sharma, an Indian engineer who met Miyawaki whilst working at a Toyota factory – Miyawaki was visiting the factory to advise on planting a forest there!

Sharma was so impressed with Miyawaki that he planted his own tiny forest in his 75m2 garden. After a flourishing new forest grew, he went on to form his own company in 2011 called Afforestt, which creates tiny native forests in India. Fantastic. It’s Sharma who has really kicked on idea of a tiny forest. You can listen to Sharma’s TED talk here.

Now over the age of 90, Mr Miyawaki has helped people to plant over 1,700 of these mini forests, firstly in Japan and Malaysia, and now all over the world. It’s said there are now over 3,000 tiny forests worldwide.

Tiny forest article in the New York Times

Tiny Forests With Big Benefits – NY Times August 24, 2023

Native plants crowded onto postage-stamp-size plots have been delivering environmental benefits around the world — and, increasingly, in the U.S.

The tiny forest lives atop an old landfill in the city of Cambridge, Mass. Though it is still a baby, it’s already acting quite a bit older than its actual age, which is just shy of 2.

Its aspens are growing at twice the speed normally expected, with fragrant sumac and tulip trees racing to catch up. It has absorbed storm water without washing out, suppressed many weeds and stayed lush throughout last year’s drought. The little forest managed all this because of its enriched soil and density, and despite its diminutive size: 1,400 native shrubs and saplings, thriving in an area roughly the size of a basketball court.

It is part of a sweeping movement that is transforming dusty highway shoulders, parking lots, schoolyards and junkyards worldwide. Tiny forests have been planted across Europe, in Africa, throughout Asia and in South America, Russia and the Middle East. India has hundreds, and Japan, where it all began, has thousands.

Now tiny forests are slowly but steadily appearing in the United States. In recent years, they’ve been planted alongside a corrections facility on the Yakama reservation in Washington, in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park and in Cambridge, where the forest is one of the first of its kind in the Northeast.

“It’s just phenomenal,” said Andrew Putnam, superintendent of urban forestry and landscapes for the city of Cambridge, on a recent visit to the forest, which was planted in the fall of 2021 in Danehy Park, a green space built atop the former city landfill. As dragonflies and white butterflies floated about, Mr. Putnam noted that within a few years, many of the now 14-foot saplings would be as tall as telephone poles and the forest would be self-sufficient.

Healthy woodlands absorb carbon dioxide, clean the air and provide for wildlife. But these tiny forests promise even more.

They can grow as quickly as ten times the speed of conventional tree plantations, enabling them to support more birds, animals and insects, and to sequester more carbon, while requiring no weeding or watering after the first three years, their creators said.

Perhaps more important for urban areas, tiny forests can help lower temperatures in places where pavement, buildings and concrete surfaces absorb and retain heat from the sun.

“This isn’t just a simple tree-planting method,” said Katherine Pakradouni, a native plant horticulturist who oversaw the forest planting in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park. “This is about a whole system of ecology that supports all manner of life, both above and below ground.”

The Griffith Park forest occupies 1,000 square feet, and has drawn all manner of insects, lizards, birds and ground squirrels, along with western toads that journeyed from the Los Angeles River, Ms. Pakradouni said. To get to the forest, the toads had to clamber up a concrete embankment, traverse a bike trail, venture down another dirt embankment and cross a horse trail.

“It has all the food they need to survive and reproduce, and the shelter they need as a refuge,” Ms. Pakradouni said. “We need habitat refuges, and even a tiny one can, in a year, be life or death for an entire species.”

Known variously as tiny forests, mini forests, pocket forests and, in the United Kingdom, “wee” forests, they trace their lineage to the Japanese botanist and plant ecologist Akira Miyawaki, who in 2006 won the Blue Planet Prize, considered the environmental equivalent of a Nobel award, for his method of creating fast-growing native forests.

Dr. Miyawaki, who died in 2021 at the age of 93, developed his technique in the 1970s, after observing that thickets of indigenous trees around Japan’s temples and shrines were healthier and more resilient than those in single-crop plantations or forests grown in the aftermath of logging. He wanted to protect old-growth forests and encourage the planting of native species, arguing that they provided vital resilience amid climate change, while also reconnecting people with nature.

“The forest is the root of all life; it is the womb that revives our biological instincts, that deepens our intelligence and increases our sensitivity as human beings,” he wrote.

Dr. Miyawaki’s prescription involves intense soil restoration and planting many native flora close together. Multiple layers are sown — from shrub to canopy — in a dense arrangement of about three to five plantings per square meter. The plants compete for resources as they race toward the sun, while underground bacteria and fungal communities thrive. Where a natural forest could take at least a century to mature, Miyawaki forests take just a few decades, proponents say.

Crucially, the method requires that local residents do the planting, in order to forge connections with young woodlands. In Cambridge, where a second tiny forest, less than half the size of the first one, was planted in late 2022, Mr. Putnam said residents had embraced the small forest with fervor. A third forest is in the works, he said, and all three were planned and organized in conjunction with the non-profit Biodiversity for a Livable Climate.

“This has by far and away gotten the most positive feedback from the public and residents than we’ve had for any project, and we do a lot,” Mr. Putnam said.

Still, there are skeptics. Because a Miyawaki forest requires intense site and soil preparation, and exact sourcing of many native plants, it can be expensive. The Danehy Park forest cost $18,000 for the plants and soil amendments, Mr. Putnam said, while the pocket forest company, SUGi, covered the forest creators’ consulting fees of roughly $9,500. By way of comparison, a Cambridge street tree costs $1,800.

“A massive impact for a pretty small dollar amount in the grand scheme of the urban forestry program,” Mr. Putnam said.

Doug Tallamy, an American entomologist and author of “Nature’s Best Hope,” said that while he applauded efforts to restore degraded habitat, particularly in urban areas, many of the plants would eventually get crowded out and die. Better to plant fewer and save more, he said.

“I don’t want to throw a wet blanket on it, the concept is great, and we have to put the plants back in the ground,” Dr. Tallamy said. “But the ecological concept of a tiny forest packed with dozens of species doesn’t make any sense.”

Kazue Fujiwara, a longtime Miyawaki collaborator at Yokohama National University, said survival rates are between 85 and 90 percent in the first three years, and then, as the canopy grows, drop to 45 percent after 20 years, with dead trees falling and feeding the soil. The initial density is crucial to stimulating rapid growth, said Hannah Lewis, the author of “Mini-Forest Revolution.” It quickly creates a canopy that shades out weeds, and shelters the microclimate underneath from wind and direct sun, she said.

Throughout his life, Dr. Miyawaki planted forests at industrial sites globally, including at an automotive parts plant in southern Indiana. A turning point came when an engineer named Shubhendu Sharma took part in a Miyawaki planting in India. Enthralled, Mr. Sharma turned his own backyard into a mini-forest, started a planting company called Afforestt, and, in 2014, delivered a TED Talk that, along with a 2016 follow up, ended up drawing millions of views.

Around the world, conservationists took notice.

In the Netherlands, Daan Bleichrodt, an environmental educator, plants tiny forests to bring nature closer to urban dwellers, especially city children. In 2015, he spearheaded the country’s first Miyawaki forest, in a community north of Amsterdam, and has overseen the planting of nearly 200 forests since.

Four years later, Elise van Middelem started SUGi, which has planted more than 160 pocket forests worldwide. The company’s first forest was planted on a dumping ground alongside the Beirut River in Lebanon; others were sown later near a power plant in the country’s most polluted city, and in several playgrounds badly damaged by the 2020 blast at Beirut’s port.

And Earthwatch Europe, an environmental nonprofit, has planted more than 200 forests, most of them the size of a tennis court, throughout the United Kingdom and mainland Europe in the last three years.

Though many of the forests are still very young, their creators say there have already been outsize benefits.

The woodlands in Lebanon have drawn lizards, geckos, birds and tons of insects and fungi, according to Adib Dada, an architect and environmentalist and the main forest creator there. In the West African country of Cameroon, where eight Miyawaki forests have been planted since 2019, there are improved groundwater conditions and higher water tables around the forest sites, according to Limbi Blessing Tata, who has led the reforestation there. Crabs and frogs have also returned, she said, along with birds that were thought to be extinct.

According to Mr. Bleichrodt, a 2021 university study of 11 Dutch mini-forests found over 1,100 types of plants and animals at the sites — kingfishers, foxes, hedgehogs, spider beetles, ants, earthworms and wood lice.

“A Miyawaki forest may be like a drop of rain falling into the ocean,” Dr. Fujiwara wrote in an email, “but if Miyawaki forests regenerated urban deserts and degraded areas around the world it will create a river.”

“Doing nothing,” she added, “is the most pointless thing.”

Tiny Forests in the Rio Grande Valley

Tiny Forest aims to improve McAllen’s environment – March 27, 2023

MCALLEN, Texas (ValleyCentral CBS Channel 4) — The McAllen community gathered Saturday to plant over 1,500 native plants.

The goal is to create a “Tiny Forest” aimed at improving the environment for residents and wildlife, creating a healthier future for generations to come.

The non-profit wing of Quinta Mazatlan along with donors, invested over $25,000 to create the Tiny Forest. Someday they hope it will become a real forest, one that is diverse and self-sustaining.

“We are right across from the Palmview Community Center and walking distance from three schools,” Colleen Hook, Quinta Mazatlan manager, said. “This forest can be enjoyed by the neighborhood and even used as an outdoor classroom for all of these schools as they watch this forest grow.”

RGVision – Magazine (Rio Grande Valley, Texas)

The Power of a Tiny Forest – Sept. 1, 2023 by Colleen Curran Hook

Tiny and dense forest patches create biodiversity spots that help cool and beautify cities. The Center for Urban Ecology at Quinta Mazatlan has planted two Tiny Forests in McAllen, one at Cathey Middle School and one across from the Palm View Community Center. Tiny Forests empower local communities to care for and help maintain the forests as they mature.

The Executive Director of Quinta Mazatlan, Colleen Hook, states, “We could not have created these Tiny Forests without the generous support of private donors.” The Friends of Quinta Mazatlan, a nonprofit board, raised another $35,000 for a second School Yard Tiny Forest located at Sam Houston Elementary. “With our joint MISD partnership, our vision is for every school to have a Tiny Forest,” shares Hook. These little wilderness areas will grow and attract beautiful birds and other wildlife. They will also offer a great learning experience for children to have a “living science lab” on their school campus.

A lot of work goes into finding partners, identifying a location, raising funds, enriching the soil, growing native plants, and caring for the forest. The support of the City of McAllen makes this urban greening initiative possible with special recognition to McAllen Parks & Recreation, McAllen Convention Facilities, Public Information Office, McAllen Public Utility and Public Works.

We would love to see Tiny Forests popping up everywhere and would like to be involved.

How Can You Help Green Our Cities? 

Stewardship opportunities include monetary gifts, gifts-in-kind, hands-on planting & weeding, citizen science research projects, photography, and more volunteer options. By planting Tiny Forests, we are bringing nature back home, and when nature does well, so do we.

The Power of Tiny Forests

  • Reduces air pollution
  • Helps with urban heat stress – the soil in a Tiny Forest can be up to 20 degrees cooler than the temperature of a city street.
  • Improves stormwater management
  • Produces oxygen and reduces carbon dioxide
  • Supports wildlife, including birds and pollinators
  • Spending time in nature reduces stress and crime
  • Children get excited about hands-on learning at school
  • Needs minimal maintenance after establishment, as nature takes over

Photos:

The concept of a Tiny Forest is to pack the benefits of a full forest into a city-friendly sized forest.

  1. Public Tiny Forest on Ware Road, where the community helped plant and is helping care for the forest—community support is key to the success of these city-size forests.
  2. School Yard Tiny Forest at Cathey Middle School, where the students and teachers helped plant the forest—and are using the forest as a “learning landscape.”