A tiny forest grows in Asheville

Above, the unfurled roots of a sapling. Unscrolling and unfurling roots is atypical in planting and part of our process.

On the heels of planting a Miyawaki forest in Virginia, we installed a second one in Asheville formed in a perfect-ish circle you can see, below. This tiny forest is comprised of 120 plants, 30 different native species. On this smaller project, we documented exactly which plants were planted in each square meter. And yes, that is a pyramidal rock in the second image below demarcating the center of the baby forest.

I started working on this land around three years ago. The owners wanted to tackle, sans chemical poisons, the flourishing invasive plants you don’t see in the images above: Grapevine, Periwinkle, Privet, English Ivy, Japanese Honeysuckle, etc. After two seasons of a protocol that included 1) mowing the invasives down, 2) “occultating,” (a fancy word for tarping the area to kill plants), 3) using the Air Knife to remove root systems, 4) adding compost/biochar and mulch, and 5) cover cropping, we had an area with minimal invasives returning so that we could plant the tiny circular forest you see in the second image above. We plan to turn the area around the forest (below) into a meadow in the next year.

We will update this blog periodically to document the disappearing rock pyramid!