Setting up a Tiny Forest for York

This is not your typical GoodGym community mission listing as there is no actual session planned for the date and time stated. The listing is instead intended to be a place for you to register your enthusiasm for launching and maintaining a Tiny Forest in our area. It is hoped the listing will promote discussion and collaboration to move the project forward. I will also use the listing to email out progress updates.

What is a Tiny Forest?

Earthwatch designed and planted the UK’s first Tiny Forest in the UK in 2020. Since then the movement has grown to almost 150 Tiny Forests, bringing together communities, public sector and businesses.

A Tiny Forest is a dense and rapidly growing native woodland in a small area, roughly the size of a tennis court. Planted in an urban area, it provides a protected habitat for wildlife, captures carbon, filters the air of harmful particulates and reduces flooding and soil loss.

Besides these important environmental effects, a Tiny Forest is also symbolic of our need to protect our wider environment and it is hoped it will provide a focal point for the education and emotional engagement of our community.

How do we know Tiny Forests bring these benefits?

Tiny Forests are not simply planted and left alone; environmental and social data is collected for every Tiny Forest, to help Earthwatch assess the benefits they provide over time and to enable comparisons between different forests. This data can then feed into a wider discussion about how we can use forests most effectively. A Tiny Forest may be small, but it can have a big impact.

What role can GoodGym play?

1. Support the journey to launch Our first job is to work together and with Earthwatch to launch a Tiny Forest. If you have ideas about where the Forest could go or how to promote this planting to the community, then please get in touch. We want schools, community groups, artisans, news media and others to get involved.

2. Planting We can plant the forest.

3. Maintenance With guidance from Earthwatch, we can use our group runs and community missions to maintain the forest. This might include watering, weeding and litter picking.

4. Monitoring This is the citizen science bit! We can use our group runs and community missions to monitor the Tiny Forest. Examples of tasks include counting flora and fauna and taking soil samples or temperatures.

If you're in support then please sign up! You can also click here to visit the Earthwatch Website and read more about Tiny Forests.

*A huge thank you to Paul Salman from GG Brent for kickstarting the GoodGym-Tiny Forest partnership, and to Amy for showing us what that might look like on a listing!

Update (31/10/2023): We're now going ahead with our Tiny Forest independently of Earthwatch. Keep your eyes peeled for an email coming your way very soon, the contents of which I'll add to this listing.