Miyawaki Forest: Reforestation Goes Small

Instead of planting a few evenly spaced trees, practitioners prepare the soil and pack many locally native trees and shrubs close together, representing different layers of a mature forest. Competition for sunlight encourages rapid growth, while mulch, watering and weeding help seedlings through their first few years. The method is chiefly attractive in cities because forests can be squeezed into small, degraded parcels.

The concept has already taken root across the U.S. Cambridge, Massachusetts, planted a 4,000-square-foot Miyawaki forest at Danehy Park in 2021, containing some 1,400 trees representing 32 native species. Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, is using the method to transform land dominated by non-native plants into forest characteristic of the region’s Coastal Western Hemlock zone.