Scotland is famous for its sweeping glens and towering pinewoods. Increasingly, though, some of its most exciting woodland is only the size of a tennis court.
“Wee Forests” are small, densely planted areas of woodland, designed to give communities a space to connect with nature on their doorstep. The idea comes from Japanese botanist Dr Akira Miyawaki, who developed the method in the 1970s. Backed by £500,000 of Scottish Government funding, the model has since taken root in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, East Ayrshire, and West Lothian, with the Scottish initiative fittingly dubbed “wee forests.”
To build a wee forest, a small plot of land is sown with native trees and shrubs, planted in soil that has been intensively restored with organic nutrients. The trees are packed tightly together to encourage them to grow upwards, rather than outwards, with each tree’s fight for sunlight propelling them to grow rapidly. The result is a self-sustaining, mature ecosystem just ten years after planting, opposed to the 100 years a larger forest will typically take.
Similar to a larger forest, however, Miyawaki forests must have four different layers: shrub, understory, sub-canopy, and canopy. Each layer creates its own microclimate, complete with nesting sites and food sources, allowing each forest to support around 500 different species in just 200 square metres.
The benefits of wee forests aren’t confined to wildlife either. Of the 34 planted across Scotland, all sit near school grounds, with a particular focus on building them in deprived areas. Students and other members of the local community are involved in planting, maintaining, and collecting data in the forests. Other wee forests in Scotland are even linked to healthcare services, with two near Dundee playing a part in green prescribing — a phenomenon where a patient’s are connected with outdoor interventions to aid their recovery. With increased time spent in nature linked to a positive effect on mental health in children, these tiny forests could be the answer to multiple issues facing Scotland’s youth.
But are they too good to be true? Some say yes, pointing to influential 1970s research which argued that we should focus conservation efforts on large, continuous habitats because they can hold more diverse species (especially larger ones) and are harder to replace once lost. The worry with Miyawaki forests is that attention and resources that could be used on conserving pre-existing large forests, are being funneled towards small forests that cannot perform the same necessary functions.
While more modern research has since argued the opposite — that smaller patches can have disproportionately large effects on biodiversity — it remains true that large forests house critical large species, something wee forests cannot do. Wee Forests thus aren’t a substitute for Scotland’s great woodlands, but they don’t need to be. As a complement to large-scale conservation, they also offer something bigger forests don’t: nature within walking distance of the children and communities who need it most.
“Miyawaki Forest at Sarovaram Bio Park IMG 20260712 083817783” by Ranjithsiji is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
