The forest stands taller than an adult human now, just three years after the small hands of children eagerly planted many of its trees, placing spindly roots into soft earth on a damp December day. Elm, yew, pedunculate oak, common hawthorn—the children, students of a nearby elementary school, were taught some of the plants’ names beforehand. As the miniature stewards of this miniature forest, it was important for them to be properly introduced. For the next few years, it would be their responsibility to weed the land on this plot of 200 square meters and occasionally water its 23 native species.
By 2024, however, the forest has surpassed the height of the planters and is now fully self-sufficient. In this way, the plants have come to care for the community that first cared for them—offering shade on hot days, purifying the air, drawing carbon down from the atmosphere, facilitating the cycling of water between the Earth and the sky, and providing a verdant space to steal a moment of peace not far from the hustle and bustle of the town center, only a few minutes away.
This is the magic of the Miyawaki Method, an approach to reforestation that can be applied to all kinds of landscapes and is accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. With just a small piece of earth and a few willing helpers, it is possible to bring a forest to life and, in doing so, improve the lives of everyone around it.
This particular mini-forest is rooted in Roscoff, a village along the northwestern coast of France, where the land was once forested but for thousands of years has been utilized for agricultural production. There is the “memory of the forest here,” says Hannah Lewis ’97, who led the initiative to restore this ecosystem according to the techniques codified by Dr. Akira Miyawaki, a Japanese ecologist.
By focusing on fostering biodiversity and relationships between native species, Miyawaki developed a series of practices to recreate the conditions for an old-growth forest in the span of a single decade, rather than a couple of centuries, and all on just a few square feet of land. It is a fascination with these two qualities—speed and size—that has drawn so many people to the Miyawaki Method in the decades since the ecologist planted the first forest of its kind in Japan in the 1970s. As we face the overwhelming, urgent threat of ever more erratic weather patterns and evidence of environmental collapse, cultivating a mini-forest presents an opportunity to enact positive change in an immediate, tangible way.
Today there are Miyawaki forests on every continent except Antarctica. Lewis, herself, has facilitated plantings in both Europe and North America. In her book, Mini-Forest Revolution: Using the Miyawaki Method to Rapidly Rewild the World, and in our conversation, Lewis offers guidance to those interested in growing mini-forests in their own communities, as well as insight as to how rewilding the land near us can play a vital role in restoring the health of our planet as a whole.
Elena Valeriote: What was your first experience of feeling strongly connected with or otherwise emotional about a tree or a forest?
Hannah Lewis: It actually wasn’t a tree or forest, but a milkweed. The summer before my senior year at Middlebury, I did a farming internship as part of my environmental studies major, and I got to live on a seven-acre diversified organic vegetable farm in West Topsham, Vermont, in the Green Mountains. I stayed in a small room in the barn, which faced a spring-fed pond where frogs lived, where we would sometimes swim after the workday to cool down and clean up. The farm was surrounded by forest, and there were trails through the forest that we [the farm interns] explored together on the weekends. Behind the barn were greenhouses, a simple three-bin composting system, and pastures with two draft horses and a Jersey heifer. There were two vegetables fields, I think, and the bigger one was adjacent to an area of tall, unmown grasses, which is where I remember being delighted by seeing the milkweed mature through stages that I had seen before—both flower and pod—but didn’t know were connected, because I had never witnessed a milkweed plant throughout a whole season. That summer in the middle of the Green Mountains was probably my first emotional connection with nature, forests, and plants of any kind.
EV: What was it then that initially led you to pursue environmental studies as a college student?
HL: I think it was because I cared about the problems of the environment and knew that they were avoidable to a certain extent. When I got to Middlebury, I already had a lot of strong feelings about things like pollution and plastic and consumption. It took me a while to figure out that I wanted to do an environmental studies major, but once I started taking the courses, I had Environmental Policy with Christopher Klyza, and it was so interesting. I was surprised that when we were discussing environmental policy, a lot of what we were talking about was the farm bill. Growing up in a city, I didn’t think about agriculture at all. Realizing what a huge impact farming policy has on the environment steered me in the direction of sustainable agriculture, which is what I have devoted most of my career to.
EV: How did you first hear of the Miyawaki Method? What compelled you to take up the cause?
HL: I heard about it while working for the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Biodiversity for a Livable Climate [in 2018], but really, it all began for me before that. My twins were born in 2014, and that was one of the years that an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report came out. Whenever an IPCC report is released, there’s a flurry of news articles, and I remember the juxtaposition of having newborn twins and reading those articles. I’m actually getting teary just talking about that . . . [A pause.] I didn’t expect that at all. [A breath.] There was this language about how we have a certain number of years to drastically ratchet back our consumption and emissions to avoid the worst tipping points. It was all so immediate that the changes needed to be made, and I was thinking: “Where are the rallies and marches? I need to get out there and be part of the voice trying to make people wake up about this.” I found my way to Biodiversity for a Livable Climate eventually, through connecting with other people doing climate-related work in D.C., where I was living at the time, before we moved to France in 2016. My job there was focused on the power of nature, rather than modern technological solutions, to stabilize things. I was reading a lot of scientific articles about the relationship between ecosystems and climate. I had this feeling that education is so important, but I also wanted to help heal a small patch of land. It was then that I read a story online about a couple in Nantes who had started a mini-forest. The Miyawaki Method clicked for me like I think it clicks for many people. I reached out to them right away, then proposed a mini-forest at the school where my kids were going and carried on from there.
EV: There are three fairly familiar words in the title and subtitle of your book that I think could be helpful to redefine or discuss in more detail within this particular context: forest, revolution, and rewild. First, could you talk about the formal definition of a forest and what it is that sets the forests designed according to the Miyawaki Method apart from other gatherings of trees?
HL: Yeah, that’s a good question—there are whole articles written about the vagueness of the word forest. The United Nations defines forest as an area of at least a half hectare that’s covered at least 10 percent by trees that reach a certain minimum height. I think that definition was developed in relation to the budding of a global forest industry. But when I speak about forests, I use an ecological definition, describing them as a biological community that’s dominated by trees, where you have multiple types of trees and plants and microorganisms interacting with each other. For a mini-forest specifically, I think of it as an ecosystem that is small enough that we can plant it in the spaces around where we live and work.
EV: After mini-forest, the next word in your book’s title is revolution. What is it about the Miyawaki Method that you consider to be revolutionary, and what is the hope for the outcome of this movement?
HL: For me, there are two meanings related to the term revolution in this context. One goes back to that spark that hits people when they hear about the Miyawaki Method. There was this whole length of Miyawaki’s career where he was taking the method and implementing it across Japan and all over the world. Then it got picked up by Shubhendu Sharma [founder of Afforestt, a Miyawaki mini-forest social enterprise] whose TED Talk video spread on the Internet. It clicked with that moment in time, with people recognizing how big of a role mini-forests can play in trying to resolve the situation we’re in. Every time people hear about the Miyawaki Method for the first time, there’s another wave of excitement and activity. That’s one “revolution,” and the other is this paradigm shift in terms of planting in public spaces. We plant trees all the time, but we do it to make places look pretty. This method is a way of thinking about landscaping as a way to restore ecosystems around us and build resilience that will help us adapt to climate change and, little by little, contribute to mitigating climate change, too.
EV: Speaking of restoring ecosystems, can you expand on how that relates here to the concept of rewilding?
HL: My understanding of rewilding is that it is trying to restore ecosystem processes—like pollination and migration—and to recreate those links that make it a viable place to live for all the species that make it up. For a mini-forest, we are trying to create the original forest community that would be growing at any given site if it had never been cleared in the first place.
EV: How would you describe the relationship between people and forests?
HL: Well, oh my gosh, to me, that is actually a very deep question. We depend on forests for so much—for our air and our climate and regulating water cycles. Forests absorb rainwater and cycle it back up to the atmosphere to come down again in a downwind area as rain, so forests help move moisture originating in the ocean into the interior of continents. Forests also have local and regional cooling effects and are the habitat of countless species. Native biodiversity is important because the interactions among species are key to ecosystem productivity and stability. Forests are no more or less valuable than every other type of biome, and the intactness of all types of natural habitats is central to what makes our planet not only beautiful, but habitable. We evolved out of forests—they are at the root of our lineage as humans. Those are pretty deep connections. All of that drove me to write this book.
EV: In your writing, you explore how in our past and present we have relied on forests to provide food and shelter and materials. For our future, what are some of the important qualities in a forest that make it best able to withstand climate change and even reverse it? Do you consider planting a forest to be a real solution to the climate crisis?
HL: A mini-forest is a human-sized solution. It is something that many individuals or communities are actually able to do, so in that sense, it’s really important as a solution. Then there’s the fact that forests are critical to the water cycle. Since the movement of water—especially in terms of extremes, such as storms and droughts—is one of the big effects of climate change, they’re a huge part of any solution. The roots of trees and plants can hold the land, preventing erosion, while also feeding the underground ecosystem, including all the fungi that hold the structure of the soil so that it has space for water and air, making it like a giant sponge. During heavy rains, a forest can help deal with floodwater, and during a drought it can make water available for longer. Cooling is another function of forests because there’s not just shade, but also transpiration. With the Miyawaki Method, you plant densely and then, after just three years, the plants and trees form this canopy that holds the moisture and coolness in the system. Cumulatively over the whole globe, ecosystems offer a temperature regulating effect and that balances out with the albedo effect, which is the reflectiveness of light surfaces. On the mitigation side, everybody knows that a leaf takes in carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, but what I think is worth contemplating is the difference between a single tree and a dense, biodiverse forest ecosystem. There’s not only that vertical depth of how much CO2 can be absorbed, there’s the greater surface area that’s absorbing light and heat. If you maintain or cultivate plant cover, carbon can be held there, whereas every time you clear it, it goes up into the atmosphere. To me, it’s a profound thought that expanding ecosystems and making them as healthy as possible is actually changing the equation and pulling down that atmospheric carbon pool and putting it into the land.
EV: One thing that you write about that I think is especially important for people to understand is the difference between a Miyawaki forest and other types of manmade forests in terms of environmental impact. What is the power of planting a Miyawaki forest in comparison to, for example, a forest for timber?
HL: First, the goal is different—one is creating a product for profit and the other is creating an ecosystem. A person could think, “At least this land is being used to grow trees, so doesn’t that help a little bit?” And yes, a timber forest is probably better than a giant parking lot. But, ecologically speaking, it’s a temporary situation since those trees will be harvested at the end of 30 years or so. Then there’s the lack of biodiversity. In Minnesota, you can see an example of what can happen without biodiversity in the way that Dutch elm disease spread in the 1980s. Most of the trees planted here were elm, so when Dutch elm disease arrived, it was a free-for-all with the pests. If just 10 percent of that one species had been mixed with others, the insects would have had to look hard to find the next one. With more pest pressure, more pesticides are used to control them, putting poison into the ecosystem. Then there’s the question of whether the trees are native or not. If you’re planting a particular timber tree that grows fast and is not native, it’s not necessarily going to support any of the life forms that depend on the native species. For example, most plant species in the world depend on fungal partners to help them get nutrients and water. A tree feeds sugars to its mycorrhizal partners in the ground in an exchange of nutrients and water. When you clear cut an area, those fungi are suddenly exterminated because they have lost their food source from the trees. It’s not just the trees that are impacted, not even just everything that lives above ground—it’s a complex system of interdependence.
EV: That’s a really helpful way of highlighting how many communities are impacted by a forest, spanning from the fungi and life within the soil all the way through to the plants and animals that live on the land, including humans. Can you share an example of some of the social impacts of forests and their roles in our communities?
HL: We will be planting another mini-forest in Saint Paul [Minnesota] and that’ll be my first one here in the U.S. since moving back [from France]. It will be in the Rondo neighborhood at the Pilgrim Baptist Church. This neighborhood was the center of African American enterprise in the 1950s. Then the interstate highway was built right through the middle of it, dispossessing people of their wealth and their businesses and their homes. The repercussions of that remain today. My project partner, Melvin Giles, lives in the Rondo community and works at Renewing the Countryside [a Minneapolis-based nonprofit focused on sustainability and rural communities]. He’s been an activist and community builder for a long time. Our other key partner is Molly Codding, who is the community environmental justice coordinator at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which has provided funding for the planting. We have several other partners who have been integral, but it was kind of magical teamwork between Melvin, Molly, and me that gave the project its first breath of life.
We started working with the church, which already has a community garden and has been a pillar of the community since before the highway was put there. There’s also an elementary school just down the street. It’s beside the interstate, so the noise and the pollution are constant. We will have two fifth-grade classes planting with us, and then we’ll have community members come the following day. On the planting day, we’re going to take a walk across the highway to a place called Rondo Plaza that memorializes the community that had been there, what was destroyed, and how they’ve tried to build back. We’re doing a time capsule, too. The kids will make little tree cookies—you know, when you slice a flat round piece of a branch. There will be the names of the tree species written on them, and the kids get to sign their names, too. They’ll also write something on an index card about what is significant in their lives as fifth graders and what they hope to happen by the time they’re seniors in high school, which is when they’ll come back to pick up the time capsule. It’s really cool how planting the mini-forest is an opportunity to root people in the history of the local community and try to continue to heal and send it on a positive trajectory going forward by increasing green space and connecting people to nature.
EV: In your personal planting experiences and research, what have you seen as the most significant challenge to starting a mini-forest?
HL: Finding the right site is a big challenge. When I first started thinking about mini-forests, everywhere I looked seemed like a mini-forest site, but not everybody has that vision. You have to find a place where your vision matches with other people’s visions for a particular piece of land.
EV: That’s an interesting reinterpretation of “when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” What is your advice for someone who wants to start a mini-forest in their community? What is the first step to take?
HL: The first step is getting acquainted with the local plant species. Pay attention to the trees along the streets and learn to identify them. The whole beauty of the process is that it is a tool to help you connect with ecosystems around you. Another big and sometimes challenging step is finding partners. I have heard from a few people who say that they can’t find anybody who wants to join them. If you are at that point, you need to keep talking to people, because you are going to find somebody eventually, and once you have a team, it becomes more fun. That was kind of my situation in Roscoff [France]. At first, it was just me. When I proposed the mini-forest to the mayor, they were like: “You have a strange accent. Where are you from? Who are you?” Then when I teamed up with an environmental organization, the project grew legs of its own.
EV: For people who are curious to learn more about the Miyawaki Method, do you have any recommendations for further reading or resources?
There is Miyawaki’s book, of course, but it is a limited edition, so it’s a bit hard to get your hands on. Then there’s a lot of information and links to additional articles on my website. There’s also a young woman, Angelina Lee, who’s in the process of creating a documentary called Making a Mini-Forest. She filmed some of the sites mentioned in the book.
EV: In this current moment, when it comes to the climate crisis, what is your greatest concern? What gives you hope?
HL: The source of my greatest concern is that the climate is affected by the economic system that we have, which is so entrenched that it is hard to imagine changing it. What gives me a lot of hope is the Sunrise Movement. I like all of the energy of young people like Greta Thunberg. It is so wonderful to see people putting themselves out there and really seriously engaging with the problem. Paul Hawken, who wrote the foreword for the book, wrote a book called Blessed Unrest. His idea was that people everywhere are doing environmental work because they know it’s important, but their work just isn’t always being seen. All of the excitement that I have witnessed about the Miyawaki Method is one example of that blessed unrest.
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