Trees – A new sense of community – why and how to plan and plant a Mini-forest

Tiny revolutions propagating worldwide are beginning to take root in America. Dense-packed native trees in supportive soil grow at many times the rate of traditional tree planting and lead to intensely biodiverse habitat, storm water capture, carbon sequestration, cooler and less polluted surrounding air, a sanctuary from stress, and educate us about the wonders of the natural world. Learn why and how to plan and plant Mini-forests from one of America’s early pioneers, Dr. Marian Glenn, and learn to see the forest from the trees.

To view her presentation, click on the Play button in the center of the screen below.

When native trees grow as a forest, they form an ecosystem of diverse plants and animals that are mutually supportive. The forest generates soil and the soil ecosystem sustains the forest. The forest generates moist air and clouds and the rain sustains the forest. A mini-forest generates a mini-forest ecosystem, and trees survive better and grow faster in this community than they do when lined up one by one along a street. A mini-forest placed in a schoolyard or a park serves a civic function by offering multiple benefits.

The Mini-forest concept, also known as a Micro-forest or Tiny Forest, follows a technique known as the Miyawaki method, which crowds together native plants, encouraging them to grow rapidly as they compete for resources. Experts say this results in outsized benefits like improving air quality, absorbing storm water and cooling down the surrounding area.

The Miyawaki method took off slowly in the U.S. with Subhendo Sharma’s TED talk in 2014. More recently, the pace has accelerated, at least in part as a result of Hanna Lewis’s book, Mini-Forest Revolution: Using the Miyawaki Method to Rapidly Rewild the World, published in June 2022. Over the last 5 years, dozens of Miyawaki forest projects have popped up across the United States. But thousands more exist internationally, with the oldest in Japan, where Akira Miyawaki invented the method in the 1970s.

Dr. Marian Glenn
Marian Glenn is Professor of Biological Sciences, Emerita at Seton Hall University where she was active in establishing the interdisciplinary major in Environmental Studies. As a forest ecologist Dr. Glenn studied symbiotic fungi and lichens as indicators of environmental health. She and her students helped monitor forest regeneration in deer exclosures in a local forest reserve. She was also active in her town as chair of the Environmental Commission. She helped establish a community vegetable garden in 2013 and participated in installing 4 rain gardens on municipal property. As president of the Rahway River Watershed Association, she organized volunteers to plant a thousand trees and shrubs in floodplains. In 2020 she joined the team to plan and plant Summit’s Tiny Forest, to restore a forest ecosystem in place of a lawn with widely-spaced mature trees. Then she moved to Ithaca, New York, and joined a team to plan and plant a Miyawaki forest there. She set up this website to encourage others https://thesoilfactory.org/activities/miyawaki-forest/

Photos below shows the initial steps to establish a miniforest in a recently abandoned corn field in Ithaca, NY by our speaker with Trees up Tompkins (Tompkins County, NY). They decided to try out 4 different soil treatments. Daniel Meyer designed the placement of trees and shrubs so that each of the 4 sections had a matched set of the 22 native species.

With 288 trees and shrubs snugly planted, the 8 foot deer fence was rolled out around the posts, and a roll of 4 foot chicken wire was unrolled and folded in half and fitted around the bottom to prevent underground entry. The fence was stabilized with 2 wires drawn through T-post insulators. One wire was attached near the top of each post and the other near the bottom.

To prepare for its first winter, the entire site was mulched with cardboard and wood chips.