A micro forest comes to the heart of Los Angeles

In just a couple of months, Downtown Los Angeles will be home to a micro forest, looking to greenify one of the most urban cities in the nation. 

This upcoming weekend, Saturday, January 31, community members are invited to what local leaders are describing as a “historic environmental milestone” at Gloria Molina Grand Park, where those interested can join in helping plant 200 trees and plants within a 650-square-foot piece of land located inside the park lawn.

These plants will make up L.A.’s first Miyawaki Forest, the first of its kind to grow in a fully urban setting and planted by the community for the community. 

The Miyawaki Forest is a recognized ecosystem in which forests are created using a method developed by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, which is rooted in planting species of native shrubs, trees, sub-trees, and canopy layers in an extremely dense area. This ecosystem is meant to create a biodiverse and multi-layered forest community.

The future forest at Gloria Molina Grand Park is expected to grow 10 times faster and 30 times denser than traditional planting. The micro forest would also help in restoring biodiversity and capturing carbon in a place where car smog and pollutants roam consistently. 

There is already something similar to this in Griffith Park, where, since 2021, the Los Angeles Parks Foundation’s LA Park Forest Initiative developed a 900-square-foot micro forest, also modeled after the Miyawaki method of afforestation. 

At both at Griffith Park and Downtown L.A., the idea is to use strictly local, indigenous species of plants and trees and plant them very densely, with various layers of vegetation planted side-by-side to provide a thick, impenetrable quality over time. 

This method was developed by Miyawaki during the 1970s to reforest areas that had been overdeveloped.

On Saturday, the planting of the Miyawaki Forest inside Gloria Molina Grand Park will begin with an opening ceremony featuring a land acknowledgement and remarks from Elder Mary Lee Jones from the Yakama Reservation of Central Washington. 

In addition, Yankuititalon, an Aztec dance troupe, will also do a land blessing. Guests will also experience a Partner Village with free planting demonstrations, a seedball-making workshop and native plant giveaways.

In addition to planting, participating families can join a seedball-making workshop taught by Friends of the LA River (FoLAR) and access free giveaways of native plants and mulch from CultivaLA, as well as free immigration and legal services provided by Bet Tzedek.

For more information and to sign up, visit grandparkla.org.