It all started when…
The Miyawaki Method
As a young graduate student in the late 1950s, Akira Miyawaki learned about the emergent concept of potential natural vegetation (PNV). This, along with his studies in phytosociology—the way plant species interact with each other—guided his explorations of the vegetation growing throughout his native Japan. Eventually, he began visiting Shinto sites and observing their chinju no mori, or “sacred shrine forests.” Miyawaki determined that these were time capsules, showing how indigenous forest was layered together from four categories of native plantings: main tree species, sub-species, shrubs, and ground-covering herbs.
Using this four-category system, along with his surveys of these sites and his knowledge of PNV and phytosociology, Miyawaki designed his own system for planting forests.
It works like this: the soil of a future forest site is analyzed and then improved, using locally available sustainable amendments—for example, rice husks from a nearby mill. About 50 to 100 local plant species from the above four categories are selected and planted as seedlings in a random mix like you would find growing naturally in the wild. The seedlings are planted very densely—20,000 to 30,000 per hectares as opposed to 1,000 per hectare in commercial forestry. For a period of two to three years, the site is monitored, watered, and weeded, to give the nascent forest every chance to establish itself.
