OPB Audio
Meet the Portland students growing a ‘tiny forest’ at school
"This is OPB. I'm Jess Hazel. Forests are more than just a bunch of trees. Look up, and you might see birds, moss, and lichen. Look down, and you might find different shrubs and grasses. Now, imagine if you could squeeze all of that into a plot the size of a tennis court. That's what's called a tiny forest. April Erlich has more on a Portland school helping lead the effort to plant more tiny forests in Oregon." Patrick Walsh remembers the first time he heard about the concept of tiny forests. "I was walking my dog and listening to the BBC, and I heard a story about tiny forests in England. And I just thought that that sounded so hopeful." This was during the pandemic, a difficult time for educators like Walsh, who teaches social studies at Catlin Gable. It's a private K-12 school outside West Portland. Walsh thought, "Why not build a tiny forest on campus?" With COVID, there was a lot of time when we weren't laughing, when we were all on screens staring at each other, feeling kind of isolated. And this is the opposite of that." Walsh got the go ahead from administrators and a plot near the track field. Then he had his students research native trees and plants, and how to plant them according to the Miyawaki method, named after the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who came up with a tiny forest concept in the 1970s. The idea is, if you plant trees and shrubs close together, they will grow faster as they can heat for sunlight. "I actually was able to get some grants for actually building it." Julia Chan, a Catlin senior, says planting day involved over 100 volunteers, including students, teachers, and community members. "I think the way we kind of built it wasn't an exact science. We had an outline of where we wanted things to be, but it was mainly just native plants, a bunch of levels of the ecosystem that could come together." Determining which native plants would work best together was a challenge, but so was clearing the grass plot, says Ari Wilda, a junior. "Some of the work we had to do in the early stages of purposefully picking not only plants that are specifically native to Oregon, but also in removing any weeds or non-native plants." Today, the plot is about the size of a tennis court. Young cottonwood and red alder trees stand at its center, and various shrubs and plants crowd around them. "It's hard to tell in December where a lot of these little shrubs are, but vine, maple, and a lot of wild roses." Walsh says there are over 600 plants. "There are native berries that are growing up in native raspberries." At just about three years old, this tiny forest is still relatively young. Still, Luna Flores, a junior, says it's grown into a mini refuge for students. "It just really allows them to kind of come up here and sort of immerse themselves in nature while also learning about something that's really interesting and cool." At first, a tiny forest might sound like a fancy name for what most people would call a park. But Nico Howlett, a senior at Catlin, says there's more to it than that. "In a park, you'd mostly have really large trees and then some grass on the ground, maybe a few bushes, but the tiny forest serves to be a whole forest that has the canopy, the understory, and all the little shrubs as well." This model can help large cities squeeze what they can into plots around urban areas, and provide a refuge for birds and insects. These clusters of plant life can also help mitigate the impacts of heatwaves, because trees cool the atmosphere. A Tharva Deepak, a sophomore here, says it's nice to learn about the environment while actually being outdoors. "It's impactful to be hands-on with the environment and not just be learning about it in a classroom." Teachers across grades and subjects find ways to integrate the tiny forest into the curriculum. For example, Walsh uses it in his social studies classes to teach students about how tribes used native plants. Luna Gonzalez Gonzalez, a junior, recalls how her science class used the tiny forest three years ago, when the plants were still young. "And one of our assignments was to walk through the sort of bigger forest we have on campus and identify different native plants and then come to the tiny forest and identify those same plants in their different stages of life." Walsh sees tiny forests as more than just an educational opportunity. They can also become a project that brings people together for a common cause. Particularly when it comes with dealing with the effects of climate change, including the rapid depletion of forests from wildfires, pests, and logging. "I think we owe it to young people to not say to them, 'Your generation is going to fix it,' but to take young people outside and work with them." Similar tiny forests have been planted in Japan, India, Europe, and some parts of the U.S., including residential areas of Portland. Walsh says he hopes the trend keeps growing here in Oregon. April Erlich, OPB.
The small patches of land host compact ecosystems and might help with climate change.