Deploying nature’s grand design in tiny spaces

Centuries ago Ireland was completely dominated by a high canopy oak forest spanning vast landscapes. In only a few places would oaks have yielded dominance; above the tree line, the riverbanks where willows and alder thrived, or the forest’s fringe where the likes of ash and birch held sway.

Forester Daniel Monaghan says that most Irish people cannot even begin to imagine such a landscape because we’ve simply never seen it before.

“Every inch of this land has been managed by humans for the last 8,000 years. There is nowhere we haven’t cut down all the trees, pretty much,” he laments.

The Tyrone native is the driving force behind a scheme to encourage communities across County Cavan to take nature’s grand design and shrink it down into parcels measuring just five metres squared. It’s tricky to imagine too. Using a Japanese method, and the help of a special additive for the soil developed by ancient peoples of the Amazon, it’s possible. Daniel is eager to explain all.

The Tiny Forest project is organised by Cavan Community Local Development and, funded by Leader. Two dozen community groups have signed up to the project hosted by Daniel, through his company Express The Best and ecologist Roisin Donnelly of RD Consulting. The groups have attended the first in a series of practical training sessions with Daniel on preparing the ground for planting, and are now back at their home bases, replicating and sharing what they have learned.

“We are trying to stimulate an explosion of growth in a previously unloved corner of land – a very small piece of land,” enthuses Daniel. “We’re setting the conditions and then walking away and letting nature sort it out from there. So we’re giving that little five metre square patch a chance to be truly wild.”

The trees, all native varieties, will be planted using the Miyawaki method, a technique that has gained traction amongst Irish environmentalists in recent years.

“In this model all the trees are very close together – crazy close together; a foot apart, which is mad,” Daniel volunteers.

Translating “Crazy” into figures: commercial forestry would typically see five or six trees planted in a 25m area. In the Miyawaki method there will be up to 80 trees planted. There’s method to the madness as Daniel stresses the scientific research behind it “hangs together really well”.

In ancient Irish woodlands, the king species, the oak dominated. Woodland fringes are a different matter.

“The forest should end in a gradient from the 35m oak to the 15m birch and alder at the edges, then down to the 7m hazels, blackthorn, hawthorn, and roses at the edge. The trees get smaller in structure and more shrubby, hedge-like as you get to the edge of the forest.

“That’s what we’re doing in that 5m square gap: we’re making a little, tiny, postage stamp bonzai model of what a forest would do across 100 acres if we left it alone.

“There’s biodiversity reason for that – that oak is probably going to win in 100 years time, and then it’s going to be there for 300 years more. Some of these species only live 100 years, like birch, alder, so they’re going to shoot up and keel over before the oak is fully mature. The oak is slowly creeping up and creeping up, but because of the pressure of its neighbours its going to be creeping up a lot faster than it would do if you planted it in a field by itself.”

Thus the density of planting helps spur growth. The trees reach upwards, trying to beat their many neighbours to catch available light - a ‘Waki races of sorts. Typically it takes eight years for canopy closure, which is when the entire ground is shaded by branches; with Miyawaki, it can take just three.

In preparing the ground, the community groups have also spread a light coating of biochar on the patch, which will further help super-charge tree growth. While commercially produced biochar can be bought, Daniel makes his own at home.

“It is the same process as making charcoal, however, before it fully cooks, you flash cool it with water which pops open the micropores in the carbon structure of the burnt wood.”

This amazingly porous material provides ample space “for biological and fungal life” to thrive within the structure which can both absorb and hold water. Carbon is regarded as a building block of life on earth, as Daniel explains, it is a “chemically, electrically and biologically very active material”.

The biochar must be “inoculated”, or else it would absorb nutrients from the soil, so Daniel soaks his in a homemade comfrey tea, essentially a barrel of water with rotting comfrey or nettles for three or four weeks.

He emphasises what farmers already know, high rainfall in Ireland leaches water, heavier metals and bacterial life out of the soil. Declan believes biochar has the potential to contribute to soil health within the agri-sector to reduce farmers’ reliance on chemical fertilisers and build “amazingly rich and active soil”.

He explains how the “genesis” of biochar came from people studying soils of the Amazon.

“Obviously the Amazon is a rain forest area, so lots of rain, lots of leaching, and yet it has some of the most fertile soils in the world. They have discovered that a lot of their soils were partially man made. The ancient people developed the way of using this biochar to fertilise their fields when they were growing fruit forests, which then got out of control when those populations vanished and became the Amazon. Those soils have persisted, cycling nutrients and cycling ions over thousands of years.”

Since Miyawaki forests are only in their infancy in Ireland, it will be fascinating to see how these Tiny Forests develop in the coming decades. The paper asks if they are tokenism in the face of the dual crises of biodiversity collapse and climate emergency. Daniel quips that if anyone has large parcels of land to plant, the forestry sector is eager to hear from them. Even for commercial forestry, with generous grants available, it’s a struggle to find landowners willing to plant. Thus Daniel explains that the benefit of these ‘tiny’ spaces is that “it’s easy got” and attracts community involvement through parishes and clubs. Given the numerous tree and shrub species, he predicts the small pockets of land will act like “a multi-vitamin for nature”.

“We’re creating a seedbank and a genetic resource for the area. Areas 5km from that seedbank will benefit from birds transferring seed in their droppings, and bees and pollinators coming in.

“We might not notice five metres there, but nature will definitely notice. And if we do enough of these we’ll create a little patchwork of Tiny Forests across the country where the genetic resources of Ireland’s trees is maybe vanishing from our landscape, such as guelder rose, that’s only really in people’s gardens. They’re going to have a space where they can really get going and persist hopefully.”

While the Tiny Forests project is underway in Cavan, Daniel is hopeful other counties may follow their lead.

“I would love this to be a pilot and for other counties to have an interest in bringing this to their communities. The community aspect of this is really important - it can bring people together out on the land, doing something that may have reverberations for centuries.”