Through the 1,2,3 plantahaie initiative of the Boisset school, in Haute-Loire, Fanny Agostini talks about tiny forests, small varied forests that can be installed everywhere. In the school, students prepare themselves to plant a hedge just behind the school, a mini forest for great lessons ...
This is a very nice project carried by Élise, the director of the Boisset school, in Haute-Loire. The idea is to plant a tree hedge that serves both as educational support for children and as a refuge for local biodiversity. An initiative that made me think of the new concept of "tiny forests". These are very well thought out mini-forests that allow biodiversity to explode without necessarily requiring a lot of space, especially in and around the cities.
One can even imagine that as the individual car disappears, parking on two is transformed into "tiny forest". It is the Japanese botanist Akira Miyazaki who developed this concept. This work shows that it takes only 600 trees on 200 m2, the equivalent of five "tiny forests" on a large space like a football field.
Twenty-two different types of trees
This concept fits everywhere, with nuances. You have to take into account the nature of the soil, that there are at least 22 different types of trees and resonate in layers: in the first place, you need big trees that will form the canopy, that is to say the top of the forest; secondly, smaller trees for the undergrowth; then the shrubs and the herbaceous ones, vegetation more stocky like the elderberry or the alder which they, finally, will end up upholstering the miniature forest. This is the winning equation for restoring small living forests!
And the results are fast! Barely three years after planting, it is a magical reconquest with multiple benefits in terms of water retention, cool island in the event of heat waves and efficient absorption of CO2. The Netherlands has already established 35 and Ireland, Belgium, Greece, France and Spain follow suit. The goal? That, in a few decades, our modern forests of pine ranged give way to forests, certainly smaller, but more natural and bio-diversified!