Pocket forests: A growing idea finds a home in urban settings
Akira Miyawaki is original creator of mini forest
Why plant a tree when you can plant a miyawaki forest?
It’s a concept that I have always thought made a lot of sense and there is actually a movement taking root, especially in parts of Europe and North America, that encourages planting an intensive mini forest.
This process of creating a small, native forest in a fraction of the time it would normally take in nature, goes by several names: including “micro forest” or “Miyawaki Forest.” In Ireland, a group of young women are even creating a business focusing on what they call a “Pocket Forest.” (But more on their efforts later in the article.)
The mini forest has its roots in the 1970s with the work of a Japanese botanist named Dr. Akira Miyawaki, hence the original name “Miyawaki Forest.” It’s a method he perfected and one that has since been adopted by a number of people looking for a way to recreate a natural forest in a very short period of time – primarily with the aim of restoring native flora and fauna as well as sequestering carbon in an attempt to save the environment from global warming.
Since Dr. Miyawaki discovered the benefits of this method it is estimated that more than 40 million trees have been planted using the Miyawaki Method.
If you are interested in exploring the world of shade gardening further, you might like my recent post on The Natural Shade garden.
Pocket Forests are becoming an important factor in helping rejuvenate nature in Dublin, Ireland.
So what is the Miyawaki method?
It is a scientifically proven method of growing a very small (in some cases tiny) urban forest of native trees and plants in the span of 20 to 30 years – a process that normally would take 200-300 years if left to nature.
A traditional forest grows in three stages: primary, secondary and finally the climax stage. The Miyawaki method skips the first two stages and moves directly to planting a very intensive climax-stage forest and climax community that is planted so dense that the trees, (a variety of native trees and shrubs) skyrocket up competing with one another for light. The result is a miniature, well-balanced ecosystem that works together above and below ground to create the miniature forest. The fact that everything is native, means that the miniature forest is able to maintain balance, is tolerant of the conditions and attracts a myriad of native plant and animal life. A study even showed that one forest attracted 600 species of plants and animals.
Miyawaki mini forest compared to commercially grown plantation
You may say that we have been growing forests for years, replanting forested areas that have been harvested for old growth trees, so why would this method be any different?
Here are some interesting comparisons between the growth of a commercially-grown plantation and a pocket forest.
The trees grow ten times faster in the pocket forest and are 30 times more dense than the trees in a commercial plantation.
Studies have also shown that the pocket forest boasts 100 times more biodiversity and is 100 times more organic than the commercially grown plantation.
Conventional forest compared to mini forests
If that’s not enough, compared to a conventional forest, the pocket forest boasts 30 times or more carbon-dioxide absorption.
If planted properly, it has a guaranteed growth of at least one meter per year and after the initial few years is completely maintenance free.
In as few as three years you have the beginning of a native forest that is completely chemical and fertilizer free with little to no maintenance after two years.
Catherine Cleary and business partner Ashe Conrad-Jones ready for another day of creating Pocket Forests.
How small can the forests be?
These forests can be incredibly small. In fact, in urban centres it is not uncommon to create a forest the size of a typical parking spot at a mall parking lot. One forest was created inside a large, steel, garbage container in an urban/industrialized area.
“We can fit our smallest one into 6 square metres. That’s about the size of a single car parking space. So they can go lots of places… In that small space we plant 11 different species,” explains Catherine Cleary, a co-owner of Pocket Forests in Dublin Ireland.
Catherine, a journalist who was writing about food and reviewing restaurants when Covid hit in February 2020 and her business partner Ashe Conrad-Jones, who runs a small events design business, decided to team up in 2020 and create “pocket forests” based on the Miyawaki method.
“Together we decided that the shutting down of restaurants and events was an opportunity to explore an idea we thought would be perfect for our area of Dublin – a part of Ireland that has the least amount of green space per person in the country. We contacted Afforest in India and IVN in the Netherlands about the Tiny Forests they were planting in urban areas and set up our social enterprise in the summer of 2020 to bring the idea to Irish towns and cities,” explains Cleary.
“No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced.”
A Pocket Forest beginning to put on growth. Notice how closely the trees are planted together.
It hasn’t been easy but the team has now grown to three with Amy joining Catherine and Ashe in January 2022. She had been working with another local social enterprise, the Dublin Food Co-Op for a decade and wanted to make a change.
How many Pocket forests have been planted?
It’s still early, but Clearly says the company has planted nearly 50 pocket forests since they started, ranging in size from six square metres to 100 square metres.
“We have faced lots of challenges, launching a business while trying to maintain our other “jobs/gigs,” explains Cleary in an email to Ferns & Feathers.
“We had to learn a lot about how to do this. It is not a conventional form of forestry or horticulture but a space all of its own,” explains Cleary. “We have struggled, until very recently, to find native plants grown organically but that is improving and in our first season we had to find temporary homes for hundreds of trees so we could use them in the next bare-root season. (We built a raised bed in my front garden and borrowed a patch of land from a cousin.)”
Part of the companys challenges is convincing local authorities that native trees and shrubs actually belong in the urban areas.
“There is a growing movement to move toward hardier, drought-tolerant, non-native trees that the horticulture industry claims will cope with climate changes and the hostility of city conditions, Cleary explains. “We argue that we should change those conditions by planting pocket forests rather than lone trees as they are incredibly resilient ecosystems, help reverse biodiversity loss and maintain our connections with native trees and shrubs.”
Their arguments get a lot of support from Peter Wohlleben, author of the 288-page, New York Times best seller The Hidden Life of Trees. In his writings, Wohlleben focusses on the importance of a community of trees working together rather than a single tree in an urban environment all on its own. He compares these lone urban trees with “street kids” trying to survive in harsh conditions on their own. These trees have a much shorter lifespan, do not grow as large and are in a daily battle for food, water and a source of healthy soil amidst the concrete of big city life.
How important is soil to Pocket Forests?
Soil, Cleary admits, is vital for the success of a Pocket forest.
“Increasingly we are fascinated by soil health and involving people who live or work or go to the school near the forests in making them so that they can become forest keepers and get all the benefits of those connections with the natural world,” Cleary explains.
“That is our mission: reconnecting people with the natural world, regenerating soil and THEN planting trees, in that order,” Cleary explains
“We love the first forest we worked on, in the grounds of a local school. It is still our largest forest and it is breathtaking to see how the plants are thriving. It is teeming with life both above and below ground and it is just in its second growing season. My own pocket forest in my garden gives me joy every day. I look closely at everything that's happening in it from day to day and season to season and it feels like a vital part of my day to do that.”
Presently, the Pocket Forest team, is working with five schools to plant larger forests this season and are just beginning to prepare the soil this month with two of them.
But their work is constantly growing and sometimes takes them into unusual places.
“We have established a small nursery in an open prison about an hour from the city and will be holding a workshop on their family day to talk to people about the trees, our obsession with worms and soil. We carry out compost workshops in our partner The Digital Hub, a local Government campus where tech start ups and other small companies are based. We are hoping to plant a balcony forest outside a neonatal unit in our local Children's Hospital.”
Currently, the women don’t work outside Ireland, but have done a cross-border project in Newry in Northern Ireland.
Super fertile soil plays a vital role in the success of the Pocket Forest.
Pocket Forest team Q&A
Ferns & Feathers sent Catherine and the Pocket Forest group a series of questions about their work, including how their system might benefit existing woodland gardeners or, if there Pocket Forests could be used for a typical new home here in North America. The following are their highly informative and inspirational answers to the questions.
1) Why did you get involved in creating these forests and do you feel they are an important factor in dealing with climate change into the future.
Cleary: “It was a very personal decision about using my time in the climate and biodiversity crises to try to help alleviate problems.
There’s a quote from David Attenborough that we kept returning to in early presentations: “No one will protect what they don't care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced.”
“Native Irish forests account for less than 2 per cent of our land habitats and many of them are inaccessible to people, growing in remote areas. Putting a version of them into places where most people live (towns and cities) links up the more wide-scale reforestation project that is going to be vital in the years ahead. We learned very quickly how positively everyone responds to the work of putting spades or forks in the ground, mulching soil with healthy compost, worms, leaf mulch and woody material to begin to try to create the conditions naturally found on a healthy forest floor. We've learned so much from the new science revealing the collaborations between plants and soil life to create thriving ecosystems. Healthy forests can be a huge help in sequestering carbon but we don't see pocket forests as a carbon-offset idea. We need to stop emitting carbon, protect existing forests and create new ones. We need to restore the reverence that Irish people used to have towards trees, the sense that the natural world is more powerfully in control of the system than we are and our efforts to impose our ideas of what looks good or extract resources without protecting the soil life all have to change. Forests are the healthiest systems and have so much to teach us about what it is that the land longs for, and how putting “forest-thinking” into how we produce food or plan cities or teach children about the world will only make things better.”
2) What are the responses of your clients 1-2-3 years down the road as the forests thicken?
Cleary: “Some of them wonder about the wildness of what they have - aphids regularly attack some plants and we've had some clients wonder about them. We give them an information booklet and for people with restricted space there are pruning instructions to keep the trees from growing to their full size. In bigger sites we are advising people to let the trees do their thing, and so far they are.”
3) Are there lessons that can be learned from Pocket forests that can be used in regular forests and woodlands to move them along more quickly or are the steps so precise that they do not translate well to traditional woodlots or forests?
Cleary: “The healthiest forest creation is done by forests. Given the chance (fencing land from grazing or mowing or spraying) a field surrounded by a native hedgerow will become a forest as the trees and shrubs seed themselves. Some management may be needed to keep invasive species out but that is really all anyone needs to do. So we take all our lessons from that. Soil management could be better done than it is at the moment in mainstream forest-creation. Foresters are still using herbicides to spray off competing vegetation after they plant young trees. This is counterproductive and we would definitely love to see mainstream forestry taking a more regenerative approach. We still clear-fell tree plantations for timber and that has to change. Continuous cover forestry is far more sustainable and ancient practices like coppicing could be rediscovered using pocket forests in schools as they grow and become established.”
The team behind Pocket Forests preparing to install yet another of their hard-working miniature forests.
4) How important is it to use native trees and plants in the creation of the Pocket Forests.
Cleary: “It's very important that the core of a pocket forest is native trees and shrubs. We don't mind if people also want to add in fruit trees and shrubs and add flowering plants to the edges of a pocket forest but the majority of it must be native.”
5) Is there anything homeowners who have their own woodland/wildlife gardens can take away from the success of the Pocket Forests?
Cleary: “Spend time enjoying your woodland or wildlife garden, see how its circular system - cycling leaf fall and branches into soil, creates a maintenance free ecosystem. It doesn't need watering, weeding or feeding. Then apply that forest thinking in your vegetable garden or flower beds. Mulch, don't dig, allow what arrives in your garden to take its space before you try to carve out all the space for your idea of what it should be.”
6) For new homeowners looking to create a woodland garden in their typical suburban backyards, would a Pocket Forest work, or would it be too intensive to be successful in a typical urban garden…?
Cleary: “We choose species that can be pruned to stay small in my very small back garden - it is a version of a forest, almost a specimen forest, a form of large-scale bonsai where the closeness of the roots and some gentle pruning in winter keeps the trees from growing to their full size. This can prolong the life of a tree ( a laid hedge can grow for 1,000 years) and also gives garden birds, soil life and insects so much habitat.”
7) Cleary: “What other words of advice might you give to those wanting more information on establishing a Pocket Forest whether it’s in their own backyard or schoolyard…”
8) Cleary: “Can the same approach be used to create a food forest that might be useful to help feed families in need etc.?
Cleary: “Community food forests have wonderful potential to reconnect families with where food comes from. Unlike an allotment where much time and skill is needed with the right planting a food forest can do much of the hard work itself and people can interact with it for enjoyment rather than the constant battling against weeds that happens in bare-soil allotment gardening. A food forest would take time to establish and it would be a stretch to say they could solve food poverty. But fruit and nuts from a food forest will be higher in nutrients and vegetable growing can be incorporated into food forests. The abundance of a food forest also lends itself to community kitchen operations where fruit or vegetable gluts can be cooked or preserved and shared.”
9) You have put in Pocket Forests in schools. What are the children’s reaction to the almost instant forests you have helped them create.?
Cleary: “They love the forests but they also love the work of creating them. Many of the children we work with have no gardens, not even balcony space to grow things and get their hands in the soil and have contact with its health benefits. One girl talked about her trees being her legacy to the school. That made us very happy (and tearful). The children who need it the most are the ones that we see blossoming when we go in to work on a pocket forest project. We would love to grow the enterprise to be able to offer training and jobs to these young people, to train an army of pocket foresters for the future.”