The Miyawaki Method: How Tiny Dense Forests Are Growing 10x Faster Across the UK

Imagine planting a forest the size of a tennis court and watching it become a dense, self-sustaining woodland in twenty years. No irrigation after the first couple of seasons. No maintenance after three. Just a thick, biodiverse patch of native trees growing up to ten times faster than a conventional plantation. This is the Miyawaki method. And it works.

Named after the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who spent decades studying the natural vegetation of Japan's temple forests, the technique has been used to plant over 40 million trees worldwide [1]. It has now arrived in Britain — and the results so far are remarkable.

How a tennis court becomes a forest

The method is deceptively simple. You take a small plot — it can be as little as 100 square metres — and do the following. First, analyse what native species would grow there naturally if humans hadn't intervened. Select 20 to 30 species appropriate to the local soil and climate. Prepare the ground by enriching it with organic matter and loosening the soil to improve drainage. Then plant densely: three to five seedlings per square metre, far closer than conventional forestry, with species mixed randomly to mimic natural diversity.

Mulch the ground heavily to retain moisture and suppress competing grasses. Water and weed for two to three years. Then walk away.

The result defies intuition. Trees grow fast because they're competing for light, exactly as they do in nature. The dense planting creates a microclimate — sheltered, humid, rich in decomposing leaf litter. Research published in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening found that Miyawaki forests develop canopy closure and self-sustaining conditions within three to five years [2]. Within twenty, the result resembles woodland that would normally take two centuries to develop.

Britain's tiny forests

Earthwatch Europe launched their Tiny Forest programme in the UK in 2020. They've since planted over 200 sites across the country, each roughly the size of a tennis court, each planted by community volunteers using Miyawaki's principles.

The first Scottish Tiny Forest was planted in Dundee in 2022, at Menzieshill, as part of the city's urban greening strategy. Monitoring has shown rapid growth and measurably increased biodiversity within the first two years. Sites in Cambridge, Birmingham, and London have produced similar results — significantly more insect species than equivalent areas of mown grass, and better rainwater absorption, which reduces surface flooding [3].

What's striking about these projects isn't just the ecological data. It's the speed. We've been told for decades that woodland creation is a generational project — plant a tree for your grandchildren. Miyawaki showed that you can plant a forest for yourself.

Could it work in Aberdeen?

There's no reason it couldn't. The species palette for northeast Scotland is rich enough: birch, rowan, Scots pine, alder, hazel, willow, holly, hawthorn, elder, with ground cover like wood sorrel, wild garlic, and native ferns. NatureScot's guidance on native woodland creation lists dozens of species suited to our soils and climate.

Aberdeen's granite soil can be thin and acidic in places, but the Miyawaki soil preparation step addresses precisely this. The method has been used successfully in climates far harsher than ours — from the Netherlands to India, from South Korea to the Canadian prairies.

The real barrier isn't climate. It's land. You need a patch of ground at least 100 square metres, ideally not shaded by buildings. Council land, school grounds, community gardens, even large private gardens could all work. What you need most is someone willing to say: this patch of mown grass isn't serving anyone, let's turn it into something alive.

What your own garden can learn from Miyawaki

Even without space for a full mini forest, the principles translate beautifully to domestic gardening.

Plant densely, with diversity. Monocultures — a lawn, a single hedge species — are fragile. Mixed planting is resilient and supports more wildlife. Improve your soil first: compost, mulch, organic matter. Healthy soil grows healthy plants, faster. Mulch everything — bare soil is wasted soil. And consider leaving a patch wild. You'll be amazed how quickly biodiversity returns when you stop fighting it.

If you want help managing the balance between a usable garden and something wilder, that's exactly what we do at Albyn Fieldworks. Get in touch — we're always happy to work with nature rather than against it.

Notes

[1] Akira Miyawaki (1928–2021) was a Japanese botanist and plant ecologist. His method, originally developed for ecological restoration of degraded land in Japan, has been applied in over 3,000 locations worldwide. A good overview of his life and work is in this Guardian feature from 2020.

[2] Shirone, M. et al., "Growth dynamics and ecosystem services of Miyawaki-method forests: a review," Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 2021. The review found that Miyawaki forests achieve canopy closure 20-30 times faster than natural succession and significantly outperform conventional plantations in species diversity.

[3] Earthwatch Europe's monitoring data on UK Tiny Forests is published on their programme page. For Scotland specifically, the Dundee Tiny Forest project was covered by BBC Scotland at planting and has since been monitored by the University of Dundee.