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TACOMA, Wash. — Wendy Clapp dreamt of turning her backyard in Tacoma into a Pacific Northwest forest. But for 25 years, she was stuck fighting back an aggressive invasive species that filled the yard: Japanese knotweed.
Her search to destroy this noxious bamboo-like weed and restore her yard got her thinking.
" What if Tacoma had never been developed?" Clapp questioned.
She imagined her Victorian home as it might have existed hundreds of years ago, with native plants all around.
Clapp turned to a decades-old planting method from Japan to design her forest. The Miyawaki method involves planting native trees and vegetation close together — so densely that 350 trees can fit in an area as small as six parking spaces. The plants compete for nutrients and sunlight, forcing them to grow quickly. Within 20 to 30 years, a fully mature pocket forest emerges.
Clapp's forest begins through a wooden gate.
Wild strawberries, ferns and Pacific ninebark cover the ground.
A big leaf maple stands not far from Clapp's pride and joy, her paper birch.
Clapp's burgeoning pocket-size forest is one of thousands found throughout the world, including India, Ireland, Brazil and the U.S.
The Yakama Nation in Washington state planted a small forest at the Yakama Nation Corrections & Rehabilitation Facility six years ago.
"We live in such a world right now, where we strive to learn about what [undisturbed land] looked like without knowing it," said Marylee Jones, a gatherer and member of the Yakama Nation. "When you do things like this, you're setting up opportunities."
Those opportunities include shade for visitors during hot summer months in the high desert. It's also a place to heal and to learn about traditional plants.
"When you're out here, you start to understand the value of sunshine, and you start to understand the value of not just the tick-tock of the clock, but of how many heartbeats you have in one day," Jones said.
On the other side of the country in May, 50-some volunteers gathered in Attleboro, Mass., to plant a Miyawaki-style forest. Hundreds of trees and plants will turn an abandoned baseball field into an area that can absorb water during heavy rain.
The forests are helping communities adapt to a warming world. But as to whether they can reduce planet-warming pollution? That's less clear. Researchers tell NPR those benefits might be overstated.
A forest born out of industrialization
The late Japanese ecologist and botanist Akira Miyawaki developed this planting method in the 1970s. He wanted to re-create lush native forests preserved in sacred areas near temples and shrines in Japan.
He imagined a place before people and what vegetation would have naturally existed. This concept of potential natural vegetation helped him select different native species for projects. He then planted a variety of trees tightly together. He found that these forests competed for sunlight and nutrients, which forced them to grow up to 10 times faster than if they had taken root on their own.
Japanese law in the 1970s required industrial companies to have green areas on their sites to prevent pollution and disasters.
Fumito Koike, a professor emeritus specializing in ecology at Yokohama National University, where Miyawaki taught, said Japanese companies asked Miyawaki to plant small, dense forests on their lands.
Miyawaki worked with companies, including Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi, hosting workshops for employees to teach them how to quickly turn barren land into rich, mature forests.
Soon, Miyawaki's work took off. Japanese multinational companies asked him to work on their sites overseas. Miyawaki, who died in 2021, led plantings in 15 different countries, including Malaysia and China.
He claimed that restoring native forests is one of the best ways to prevent further ecological disasters and improve carbon dioxide absorption.
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Are mini-forests a climate solution?
"I believe that creating indigenous and real forests, and covering as much of the land as possible with forests, is the most certain and effective measure to reduce carbon dioxide," Miyawaki wrote in his essay "A Call to Plant Trees."
The method has caught on, but whether these pocket forests are the golden ticket for sucking up and storing carbon dioxide isn't clear.
Narkis Morales, who works at the Bioeconomy Science Institute in New Zealand, sifted through 51 published studies about the Miyawaki method. He found that a lot of the claims about the method haven't been verified. He likens it to a placebo in a medical trial.
" Are you going to give someone a drug that perhaps is not going to have any effect on that person?" Morales asked.
His findings, published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, show Miyawaki forests haven't been as rigorously evaluated as other planting methods. The study finds most of the claimed benefits, including rapid growth, higher carbon sequestration and increased tree density, don't have enough research to back them up.
It can also be costly to plant a Miyawaki forest. Morales, based on available data, estimated a project in the United Kingdom could cost $1.3 million per hectare. A different method that supports existing natural vegetation rather than planting new trees costs, on average, $143 per hectare.
So for cities wanting to address climate issues, Morales said: "Perhaps there are better options or ways to do it in a more efficient way."
Morales, however, said planting these dense pocket forests is better than cities covered in concrete.
"Any vegetational cover that you put in the city is going to have a positive effect, especially with heat," Morales said. "People have a place to gather or sit or meditate, or kids can go there and play."
Fazal Rashid, an ecological gardener working in India, is also critical of the Miyawaki method after trying it himself. He said in an email to NPR that ecosystems vary and require different approaches.
Rashid said that to effectively rewild the landscape, people need to try different planting tactics in small areas to see what happens.
"Instead of reaching out for a supposedly universal one-size-fits-all insta-formula like the Miyawaki method," Rashid wrote, "we need to accept that rewilding is more about local people reconnecting with their local ecologies and beginning the slow process of restoring a relationship with each other and the land."
Community buy-in matters
In May, high school and college students, along with other community members in Attleboro, Mass., planted 550 native saplings in the once hard-packed soil of an old baseball field.
Now, students hope their efforts will help the community.
"This will cool the area that it surrounds and sponge the water that comes in from flooding," said Jamie Young, a junior at Clark University who helped.
That's a big deal in a place that has dealt with flooding, most recently in 2023.
John Rogan, a professor of geography at Clark University, helped plant the forest in Attleboro. He has studied the impact of community engagement on tree survivability.
" The best tree planting you could ever have is by people who are trained, who live in that street, and they have ownership of that tree," Rogan said.
In other words, community stewardship is essential for the survival of urban trees.
And it's the community that showed up two years ago to help Wendy Clapp in Tacoma, Wash., plant her backyard mini-forest. They gathered on her birthday for a planting party, then celebrated around a fire later that night.
Clapp has continued to add more plants in recent years.
She said for her, the Miyawaki method has worked — the invasive Japanese knotweed that's long taken over the backyard is now getting crowded out by native plants.
" This is the first time I've seen real hope, where I see, like, we're actually making a difference out here now," Clapp said.
Lauren Gallup is the South Sound Reporter at Northwest Public Radio. Courtney Flatt is a Senior Correspondent at Northwest Public Radio. And, Bianca Garcia is the Climate and Environment Reporting Fellow at WBUR.
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