{"id":742484,"date":"2026-07-04T09:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T09:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/742484\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T09:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T09:06:16","slug":"tiny-forests-popping-up-across-sydney-as-part-of-effort-to-restore-urban-tree-canopy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/742484\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiny forests popping up across Sydney as part of effort to restore urban tree canopy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tiny forests are starting to spring up in small land plots in Sydney’s suburbs as locals look to replace the city’s disappearing tree canopy and stave off urban heat.<\/p>\n

Taking advantage of underutilised green spaces in council reserves and school grounds, the trees are planted in enriched soil to quickly grow forests in 200-square-metre plots.<\/p>\n

One project in West Pymble in Sydney’s north has created a patch of endangered Sydney turpentine ironbark forest shading a previously flat grass reserve near a petrol station.<\/p>\n

\"The\"West West Pymble Village Green at the time of planting.\u00a0 \/ The tiny forest two years after planting.<\/p>\n

Shannon Antsee from Earthwatch, an NGO that plants small forests, said the West Pymble forest had shot up as high as 7 metres.<\/p>\n

“We find that we get really rapid growth of our tiny forests,” Ms Antsee said.<\/p>\n

“Sometimes council have underused, underutilised parks and we can use those spaces to turn them back into green sanctuaries.”<\/p>\n

Ku-ring-gai Council Mayor Christine Kay said the tiny forest helped solve the problem of forming tree canopy in a constrained urban site.<\/p>\n

“Tree plantings on our streets and in our parks are usually very slow to form a canopy,” Cr Kay said.<\/p>\n

“The initiative provides a scalable blueprint for other councils seeking measurable outcomes from small urban sites.”<\/p>\n

A Macquarie University assessment of the forest at West Pymble Village Green found the plants were 87 per cent bigger than plants in a nearby control plot.<\/p>\n

A tiny forest was recently planted in Campbelltown, becoming the second Earthwatch had planted in the Sydney area.<\/p>\n

Ms Antsee says the forests grow quickly because they use what’s known as the Miyawaki method, developed by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

The method involves densely planting a variety of plants in nutrient-rich soil. The resulting competition between plants forces them to grow upwards quickly.<\/p>\n

“Within 200 square metres we aim for at least two to five different species and we also add nutrients into the soil,” Ms Antsee said.<\/p>\n

Land clearing spurs more forest projects<\/p>\n

Groundswell Collective is another NGO that plants tiny forests, mostly in the Hunter and Lake Macquarie regions of NSW.<\/p>\n

Founder Anna Noon said she got into building tiny forests in response to land clearing for housing in the Lake Macquarie area.<\/p>\n

She says Groundswell has since planted 21 tiny forests in mostly regional schools and one in the Cook Islands, covering about 5,480 square metres.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

In 12 months a tiny forest at Teralba Public School has experienced rapid growth. (Supplied: Groundswell Collective)<\/p>\n

“For us, it was really about taking practical community action,” Ms Noon said.<\/p>\n

“Reducing urban heat and kind of counteracting some of those impacts that we saw from development and from climate change.”<\/p>\n

A Macquarie University study from 2020 found vegetation could lower surface temperatures by up to 6 degrees Celsius during the day.<\/p>\n

A solution to Sydney’s unequal tree canopy<\/p>\n

Tiny forests are a possible solution for areas that have been missing out on attempts by governments to regrow Sydney’s tree canopy.<\/p>\n

Most of Sydney’s council areas have less than 20 per cent tree canopy coverage, particularly in Western Sydney which fuels the urban heat island effect.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Recent government data shows tree canopy, in dark green, is largely in Sydney’s north and the city’s urban fringes. (Supplied: NSW government)<\/p>\n

A recent study by The University of Sydney found the tree canopy was coming back, but some parts of Sydney were missing out on being able to replant their missing trees.<\/p>\n

Associate Professor Nader Naderpajouh said it was hard to put more canopy into inner city areas with leafy reputations like Ku-ring-gai because of the existing built environments.<\/p>\n

“It’s very built and there is not much room,” Dr Naderpajouh said.\"a<\/p>\n

A University of Sydney analysis shows areas in red that have fewer suitable spaces to plant new trees for the urban canopy. (Supplied: University of Sydney)<\/p>\n

The analysis found neighbourhoods in the Fairfield, Liverpool, Bayside and Ku-ring-gai were among the council areas with the least opportunities for tree regrowth.<\/p>\n

Dr Naderpajouh said solutions such as tiny forests might help restore the canopy in areas where there was not a lot of room to grow new trees.<\/p>\n

“Projects with dense focus can improve the capacity of certain areas,” Dr Naderpajouh said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tiny forests are starting to spring up in small land plots in Sydney’s suburbs as locals look to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[318972,192,318977,318976,79,318974,318973,318970,318975,318971],"class_list":["post-742484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-campbelltown-tiny-forest","tag-environment","tag-fast-growing-trees","tag-miyawaki-method","tag-science","tag-sydney-tree-canopy","tag-tiny-forests-greater-sydney","tag-tiny-forests-sydney","tag-tree-canopy-solution","tag-west-pymble-tiny-forest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}