Depending on the day, the weather and your mood, the world can sometimes seem bleak. Everywhere you look are data and stories that describe, in excruciating detail, the great shared and personal challenges of our time: climate change, and loneliness. Sadly, there are no fairy godmothers in this dire scenario. But there are enchanted forests – tiny ones – which seem to be a balm on both fronts.
Like many clever ideas, tiny forests are themselves a form of biomimicry, a practice that emulates models, systems, strategies and elements found in nature to solve complex human design challenges.
For many, tiny forests are a tangible and practical way to engage with the climate crisis; a small action anyone can make – with fast, oversized results.
Like patches of fungi after rain, a growing number of these tiny forests are cropping up in urban neighbourhoods in every corner of the globe: in some cases turning concrete jungles, car parks and petrol stations into flourishing green oases. Despite their diminutive size, they are conjuring outsized achievements in carbon sequestration and biodiversity recovery. But not only do tiny forests benefit local environments in a state of climate and habitat crisis – they also create rare and meaningful intimacy for people suffering our own twin crises of loneliness and disconnection. Could these tiny forests be the answer to some of the most urgent social and environmental challenges facing our cities?
Tiny forests (also described as mini, pocket and ‘wee’), are typically homed on urban lots around the size of a tennis court, and sometimes smaller. But it’s not just their size that makes them special. They grow much faster than single-crop plantations due to a magic trifecta: enriched soil, dense composition, and use of exclusively indigenous plants, sown in multiple layers from shrub to canopy. The intense arrangement encourages heavy competition for resources – particularly sunlight – as plants tap into thriving bacterial and fungal networks in the soil.
Like many clever ideas, tiny forests are themselves a form of biomimicry, a practice that emulates models, systems, strategies and elements found in nature to solve complex human design challenges. The idea for tiny forests sprouted in the 1970s when the late Japanese botanist and plant ecologist Akira Miyawaki observed that groups of indigenous trees around temples and shrines seemed healthier and more resilient than monoculture plantations. His method for creating fast-growing native forests, based on these observations, earned him the prestigious Blue Planet Prize in 2006.
SUGi is a global organisation and network of forest makers continuing Miyawaki’s legacy. Since 2019, their people have planted more than 200 pocket forests, some 350,000 native trees across nearly 16 urban hectares in 42 countries across six continents. In Georgetown, South Seattle in the USA, their team converted the site of a former petrol station into a thriving native forest.
“The Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle is an industrialised and highly polluted area of the city with some of the worst air quality in the region. It’s where the majority of local people of colour live and adjacent to one of the most polluted waterways in the USA,” says SUGi Founder, Elise Van Middelem. “SUGi is turning the tide against this environmental injustice and the extreme heat which has plagued residents for years.” As Elise explains, this is more than your average tree planting exercise. This is about creating micro-ecosystems that help cities and urban communities to be more resilient.
As well as this kind of social justice and remarkable environmental benefits, the sweet silver lining of Miyawaki’s method is that it embeds community, with local residents doing the planting in most cases. All around the world, everyday citizens are engaging with tiny forest planting, reconnecting with nature and each other. It’s literally a ‘grassroots’ movement, with communities coordinating to plan and plant in a fertile atmosphere of hope and high spirits.
Anna Noon, Co-Founder of The Groundswell Collective, a not-for-profit focusing on tiny forests in the Lake Macquarie district of New South Wales in Australia, describes the scene: “We have a diverse range of community members taking part – our youngest was 12 months old, to an 85-year-old person – and everyone gets something different out of it. For some, it’s about that hope and inspiration, or being part of a legacy, leaving something behind. On the other hand, some of the school-aged children had never planted a tree or dug in the dirt, so it’s a completely new experience for them.”
For many, tiny forests are a tangible and practical way to engage with the climate crisis; a small action anyone can make – with fast, oversized results. “Climate problems feel big,” explains Sharon MacGougan, head of the Garden City Conservation Society in Richmond, BC, near Vancouver. “Sometimes the best thing to do is keep moving forward in small ways. These tiny forests are perfect for public engagement because they are fun, inclusive and friendly, and they don’t take long to plant.” Anna agrees, saying, “There’s so much fear and concern about the climate crisis, people feel overwhelmed and tend to withdraw or shut down. The tiny forests are a positive, proactive, pro-social avenue for people to take action. They become a public display of what we can all achieve together.”
The healing effects of forests have long been harnessed in many cultures, as in the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), for example. For tiny foresters, reverence and healing are seeded right into the planting process. “One woman planted a tree to honour and remember a relative that had recently died,” Sharon recalls. “Another woman was undergoing cancer treatments and couldn’t help us on planting day. But now she walks by the installed forest every day and says she feels refreshed from the plants and the people always milling around. She feels the forest is part of her cancer recovery process.”
Much like the intricate ecology of forests themselves, these projects knit people of different ages and backgrounds together through knowledge-sharing and experience. “I’ve witnessed parents teaching their children how to plant, and also youth translating planting instructions to their elders – bridging generations through the act of planting,” Sharon adds.
Back in Australia, Sketch MacGuire, a student at Dapto High, has personally felt the connective benefits of tiny forests. A tiny forest project near his school in Wollongong, south of Sydney, was organised by the local council on a plot of land previously known as ‘the dirt patch’. As well as being good for mental health and bringing classroom learnings to life, “I’ve definitely gained quite a lot of friendships through working with the tiny forest,” he shares. The group goes back twice a year to measure plant growth and check soil quality, but despite his busy Year 11 schedule, Sketch also makes time to occasionally go there on his own to do some weeding. “Because I’ve been involved from the beginning, it’s put me in a closer relationship with nature and that part of the land,” he explains.
One of SUGi’s marquee projects has become a restorative and awe-inspiring space for millions of people. Unexpectedly nestled within the brutalist concrete forms of the Hayward Gallery within London’s Southbank Centre – an arts precinct visited by vast numbers of tourists and locals every year – Elise describes how it is emblematic of her vision for the future of our cities. It's like acupuncture for cities, she says:
“Small interventions, transforming spaces that were once unused or abandoned serve as needles which help cities like London to heal”.
