Whole Wild World
Urban Rewilding · Gibraltar
Mini forests. From 100 square metres. Sometimes less.
A dense, native forest, planted the Miyawaki way, in the places people already are — a school ground, a verge, a corner of a car park.
What a mini forest does
Five things happen when a forest goes in.
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Biodiversity
A high density of native species supports insects, birds, and the life of the soil.
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Climate resilience
The forest moderates thermal and water balance, and takes up CO₂.
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Aesthetic value
Greener streets — and the real-estate value that follows them.
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Education
A forest in a school ground is a living classroom.
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Health & wellbeing
Everyday contact with nature, where people live and work.
Ecosystem services
What the forest gives back, by category.
Ecologists sort what a forest does into four categories of service. A mini forest performs all four.
| Category | Services |
|---|---|
| Support | Biodiversity · CO₂ uptake |
| Regulation | Chemical & noise pollution · thermal & water balance |
| Provisioning | Crops · soil · human health |
| Cultural | Real-estate value · wellbeing · education |
- Support
- Biodiversity · CO₂ uptake
- Regulation
- Chemical & noise pollution · thermal & water balance
- Provisioning
- Crops · soil · human health
- Cultural
- Real-estate value · wellbeing · education
The Method
Four layers, planted at once.
A Miyawaki forest is not a row of saplings. It is four strata planted together, densely, in soil rebuilt from the microbes up — the way a forest would assemble itself if it had a hundred years and we did not.
- Four strata · one planting
- Viable from 100 m²
CanopyEmergent crowns. The last layer to arrive.
TreeThe structural body of the forest.
Sub-treeShade-tolerant. Fills the middle.
ShrubGoes in first. Holds the soil.
Soil, rebuilt from the microbes up
Tiny Forests
A method with a history.
The method was developed by the botanist Akira Miyawaki from phytosociology — the study of how plant communities actually assemble. Its Mediterranean adaptation was led by FCULresta, at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon.
The movement, so far JAPANINDIAFRANCENETHERLANDSUNITED KINGDOMCHILEPORTUGAL
And every mini forest we plant is linked to a wild site it supports — that model has its own page: Urban to Wild.
¹ Advocates report Miyawaki plantings growing roughly ten times faster and thirty times denser than conventional plantings. These figures originate with practitioners rather than peer review, and are contested. See our sources.
Sponsor a patch of it.
Twenty pounds is one square metre of mini forest, with your name on it. It gets planted, photographed, and placed on the Living Mosaic.
Every patch appears on the Living Mosaic — see the wall.