Hammersmith is using the Miyawaki Method to create a tiny forest in Frank Banfield Park.
It doesn’t look much now but the idea is that it grows quicker than conventional planting. A tiny forest is a dense fast-growing native woodland, about the size of a tennis court. The “forests” are planted based on the work of Japanese botanist Dr Akira Miyawaki; the Miyawaki Method. This is not to be confused with the Ickenham Method used to spread sweetness and light.
“The Miyawaki Method has been used successfully around the world in over 3,000 projects and the numbers are now also rising in Europe. The ability to create a dense native forest quickly has made the technique useful for creating urban micro forests, for restoring rainforest and Japanese evergreen broadleaf forests and for planting in arid Mediterranean habitat where other forestry techniques have not been successful. Miyawaki forests have also proven effective when used for a specific purpose, such as providing tsunami protection, stabilising mine dump slopes, as typhoon protection and for carbon sequestration. There has been particular focus on planting Miyawaki forests in urban environments as there are significant benefits to tree planting in towns and cities, and this method maximises the space available. Urban forests reduce local temperatures (-1.3°C in one study), improve air quality by reducing pollutants, sequester carbon, and improve the wellbeing of residents, as well as creating a natural oasis for invertebrates and birds. There remains, however, much scope for research on the Miyawaki method. In particular the carbon sequestration rates could be significantly higher than on forest plantations because of the density both at planting and at the final forest stage.” (Creating Tomorrow’s Forests)
It looks a bit rubbish today but by the end of this summer there should be some signs of growth and in three years it should look like a thickly planted, small patch of low forest. Dense planting (3 to 5 saplings par square metre), plenty of mulch to make the soil rich in nutrients and the tiny forest should grow ten times faster than a conventionally planted wood and be a hundred times more bio-diverse. After three years it will need no watering or maintenance. I will await events.