Mini-Forest Revolution by Hannah Lewis

When I say the word infrastructure, what do you imagine? Huge concrete highways, towering steel skyscrapers, the city bus? These are things I picture, but after reading Mini-Forest Revolution by Hannah Lewis something greener is starting to grow back inside my imagination. A forest. 

Infrastructure has three definitions in Merriam-Webster (1), two of which interest me with regard to Hannah Lewis’s guide to the reforestation method developed by Dr. Akira Miyawaki. The second definition the dictionary provides is this: the underlying foundation or basic framework (as of a system or organization). In terms of a contemporary USAmerican city, this means a few things. Asphalt and concrete streets and super highways. Red, yellow, and green traffic lights. Gas stations. Underground water and sewage systems that involve miles of iron, steel, concrete, and high-density polyethylene pipes. Sewage treatment centers, which, in Seattle, discharge to the Puget Sound (2). In some cities, insulated wires run underground alongside those pipes; in others, rubber insulated wires connected by the huge, stripped dead trees we outdatedly call “telephone poles.” And the list of underlying and basic elements goes on and on, lest we forget the built-in-six-months townhouses and constantly expanding ‘luxury’ apartment buildings reminding us that even infrastructure is not static. And that is only in the urban landscape (in which I currently live). There are countless more examples of rural, and especially suburban infrastructure that are equally disruptive to ecosystems. I challenge you to pay very close attention to the elements of your landscape you don’t usually notice and ask how they got there. 

Back to the first definition provided to us by Merriam-Webster: the system of public works of a country, state or region; also the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) required for an activity. This definition interests me greatly because of the addendum. The resources required for an activity. 

Well, even a city of middling size such as Seattle has about a million activities available at any moment, but I want to broaden the scope a little bit. What about the activity of life? Well, thankfully at this point in human history, despite the best efforts of a few assholes, the knowledge of the resources required for the activity of homosapien life are relatively well known. Food, water, oxygen, shelter, and community. And this, to me, is where Dr. Akira Miyawaki and his method for reforestation meet the idea of infrastructure, whether it be at a Toyota plant in Bangalore, India; on a small farm on the Qazvin Plain in Iran; around the municipality of Buea, Cameroon; or along the edge of the périphérique, a beltway around Paris, France. There are certain environments that can provide, and for the majority of history have provided, each of those resources. Part of our infrastructure is, has always been, and needs to continue to be forests. 

But there are lots of trees already, especially in a city like Seattle. They line the streets in many neighborhoods, providing shade and comfort. One of the essential distinctions Dr. Miyawaki made, and Lewis clarifies in her book, is that there is a huge difference between planting trees and planting forests. Later, Lewis goes on to expand on this point, noting the differences between what she calls a tree plantation (one species of tree planted only to be logged a few decades down the line) as compared to a forest. The essence of the point is this: a forest is a complex ecosystem with multiple layers of vegetation, from the highest canopy formed by the climax tree species all the way down to the shrubbery, into the soil and rivers and streams and the fauna and fungi that inhabit throughout. “To put it simply,” Lewis says, “it is the interactions we cannot see that drive the ecological processes we value.” This is a key understanding that underpins the Miyawaki Method. In a true forest, there are many natural niches which provide space for all the very specific functions any animal or plant might serve in the net of relationships that is an ecosystem. Tightly woven with that understanding is this one: homosapiens are a part of that net, and we need it to continue to thrive and survive. 

What we currently consider infrastructure is really superfluous, and more than that a funnel toward ecological destruction. Our current infrastructure relies on a global network to replace those aforementioned resources essential to the activity of human life. A network that big requires a lot of fuel to run, be it fossil or electric, and is a larger drain on our collective resources than it can replenish. A method such as Miyawaki’s not only gives us footing for recreating beautiful and essential forests but also for reassessing the way we think about infrastructure, about the resources required for the activities of our daily lives, and about how we manage those resources.  

Now I want to clarify a point here: I am not saying get rid of the hospitals so we can plant trees. What I am saying is that in order for hospitals to best serve their purpose as a place of healing in our world, they need to incorporate forests into their existence. Or perhaps the more appropriate way to say it would be they need to incorporate themselves into the existence of forests. 

This begins with the accessibility of the method. Lewis illustrates this point saying, “But the Miyawaki Method is also exciting because it can be applied to areas of any size–a fact that has given rise to the term mini-forest…Imagine turning an area as small as six parking spaces into a forest–it can be done!…the implications are radical: With enough dedication, anyone anywhere can involve their community in a process of rewilding depleted land, one small patch at a time.” In addition to showing us how we can begin to reforest even in densely populated urban centers by identifying and selecting small, attainable spaces, when considered properly a Miyawaki style mini-forest can be a bastion for accessibility for differently abled folks. Lewis gives several examples of how careful planning can lead to forests designed for specific purposes, like one the Yakama people planted in order to begin restoring traditional harvesting practices. 

So we see these forests can bring the source of the food we eat closer to home at the same time as restoring traditional cultural practices that connect people to the land. 

The planting of a mini-forest in the Miyawaki style also requires intense collaboration. While this prescription makes planting a forest attainable, it is still necessary to work with a group of people. As everyone knows, this can be difficult, but to create the type of lasting cultural transformation that could combat climate change it is essential. Indeed, caring for and monitoring wild forests could be exactly the type of job that becomes more popular in a culture that lives more deeply in tune with the earth that supports us. Even if part of the brilliance of the method is that the daily care requirements of a Miyawaki forest drop to essentially none after about three years, Lewis points out that homosapiens have cut down forests before, and we could do it again. The forests that birthed us and sustain us will only continue to thrive as long as we truly value them. Having continued commitment to the forest, to observing and recording what kind of animal species visit it, eat in it, and nest in it; to recording what new seedlings emerge each year, which trees fall and become nurse logs, how many fruiting or flowering plants bear their gifts is part of the importance of the method. 

All of this leads me to the conclusion that Akira Miyawaki’s method for planting forests is deeply bioregional. It is hyper-specific in that it requires the analysis of the ecological niches and functions (3) inherent to them. So if we were to plant our forest on a hill, we would take into account that some tree species in our immediate locality will want to be at the bottom, closer to where the water collects, and others will want to be up on the peak of the hill. Some would like to be on the northern, shadier side of the hill, while others would prefer the sunnier southern slope. The Miyawaki method asks us to consider elements of a forest like which species has developed over tens of thousands of years, in this exact place, to interact with fungi that will help store carbon in the forest soil. This all comes from the idea of Potential Natural Vegetation, which Lewis summarizes as the answer to this almost obvious question: what does the healthiest ecosystem look like in this specific place? 

In order to identify the Potential Natural Vegetation of a place, Miyawaki encourages us to turn not just to seed registries and nurseries, but also to the ancient cultures of a place. Lewis tells the story of how Miyawaki himself, when first developing his method, dreamt of a massive tree at the ancient Shinto shrine in his home village. When he visited the shrine, he realized it had been preserved by the first human settlement in the area for religious purposes, and he was able to find many of the climax species of trees within, even though those same trees were not the dominant species in surrounding forests. Those forests had been heavily tampered with by homosapiens. The success of the forest he planted there is the proof in the pudding. Lewis also relates the story of a forest planted in Maruvan, India, near Jodhpur. Gaurav Gurjar, the leader on the project, found some of the climax tree species he was searching for in paintings in a nearby temple, which depicted an event from the 1730’s where a king’s men killed women as they defended khejri trees (Prosopis cineraria). As a bioregionalist would, a practitioner of the Miyawaki Method turns to the cultural history, the ancestors of the place to learn better how to care for it. 

Additionally, reading Mini-Forest Revolution clarified one question I have been carrying around about Bioregionalism: in this world where communication can take place across the breadth of the globe in the time it takes to blink, in this world where that power has been abused by corporations who throw advertising and sex around like candy to attract folk’s attention, how could a whole culture of people, caught in that process of homogenization, be convinced to look closer to itself? Be convinced to care deeply about which plants are struggling through the cracks in the asphalt? Lewis shows us that the Miyawaki Method, wielded by the right community member(s), has the power to recapture the attention of people all over the world, direct it away from smartphones and toward the Earth that nourishes us. 

Lewis’s book is filled to the brim with these stories of discovery and rediscovery, the return of endemic species of animals and plants, and the replenishing of rivers and streams. It also relates stories of struggle to achieve that success, bureaucratic and personal roadblocks that Miyawaki Forest planters encountered in their journeys. Lewis tells her own story of struggle and eventual success to plant a Miyawaki Forest, saying “For me, the mini-forest was not meant simply as a nice amenity, it was first aid for the planet, or at least for this tiny patch of planet.” Meanwhile, whether it be back to back bomb cyclones hitting the Washington State coastline this past winter, or the fires currently raging in Southern California, the planet is screaming for help. One way we can do that, and “protect [our] lives from disastrous situations,” as Miyawaki said, is by planting Miyawaki mini-forests. Imagine if every neighborhood considered a forest to be an essential part of their infrastructure.

(1) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/infrastructure

(2) https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dnrp/waste-services/wastewater-treatment/about/system-and-service-area/facts

(3) Lewis explains, “An important aspect of biodiversity is ‘functional diversity,’ which refers to the range of traits among different species that drive ecosystem functions. The species that share a functional trait are considered to be members of a functional group. Nitrogen-fixing plants, such as clover, beans, and alder trees, are an example of a functional group.” 

Lewis, Hannah. Mini-Forest Revolution: Using the Miyawaki Method to Rapidly Rewild the World. Chelsea Green, 2022.