The land outside the Kotturpuram railway station in Chennai, on the South Indian coast, was once a barren stretch people avoided, filled with construction debris and rubbish. Today, it is lined with lush trees of jamun, neem, Java plum and teak, attracting birds, bees and butterflies. Modelled on the concept devised by Japanese botanist and ecologist Akira Miyawaki, it is just one of the many miniature urban forests to have sprung up in major Indian cities. Miyawaki, now 93, in 2006 won the Blue Planet award for environmental conservation . His approach draws inspiration from his country’s Chinju no mori – sacred, biodiverse forests cultivated as pockets of urban serenity alongside Shinto shrines and graveyards. These dense, multilayered forests include dozens of native trees and shrubs planted close to one another, ensuring they grow upwards instead of sideways as they compete for sunlight. For more than 40 years, the “Miyawaki method” has been employed around the world to transform urban spaces into tiny forests. In 2008, Shubhendu Sharma was a young industrial engineer working for Toyota. After hearing one of Miyawaki’s presentations, he became so fascinated he offered to help Miyawaki establish a forest at Toyota’s facility in Bangalore. Sharma began studying Miyawaki forests and built an algorithm to help develop them more precisely. In 2011, he founded his own company, Afforestt, which specialises in the various steps required to create a Miyawaki forest, including procuring raw materials, conducting soil assessments and ultimately planting and maintenance. “These forests grow 10 times faster than conventional forests and are 30 times denser as they have more leaf surface area,” Sharma said. “Unlike a natural forest which may take 200 years to become mature, these take three years to be full-fledged and after that require little maintenance. “Of course, it should be land that’s capable of supporting life and was in the past covered with trees – rocky land for example is not a good place to start one.” After soil assessment, native species are selected and planted in a base of biomass or wet waste using coconut husk, sawdust and cow dung. Seedlings are planted close together, forming rings of shrubs, medium-sized and taller canopy trees. Afforestt has planted more than 160 forests in 56 cities across 13 countries . Some of the forests are as compact as 100 square metres. At the other end of the spectrum, Mumbai’s largest Miyawaki forest was planted on Indian Navy land, over 2,500 square metres in front of the main building in Marve-Malad. The cost of setting up a Miyawaki forest in a city such as Mumbai is about 500-800 rupees (US$7-US$11) per sapling. Miyawaki forests are a partial response to the problem of deforestation , which contributes to carbon emissions, soil erosion and loss of biodiversity. In India’s congested cities, green cover has disappeared, creating heat islands where buildings and roads absorb and re-emit the sun’s energy. Planting Miyawaki forests improves carbon dioxide absorption, increases soil nutrients, lowers temperatures and promotes bird life. Pradeep Tripathi, co-founder of an NGO called Green Yatra, started Mumbai’s first Miyawaki forest in 2019, in front of the Central Railside Warehouse company in Jogeshwari East on a plot of land about 2 square kilometres. “We learned the method from Afforestt and created it according to their guidelines, planting native trees after inspecting natural forests, to understand the ecology,” said Tripathi, who plans to establish more miniature forests in Navi Mumbai and Delhi. “It’s a 100 per cent organic method, using native species which attract birds and bees, and the growth rate is astounding even over a period of one year. In a crowded city like Mumbai, where space comes at a premium, even in a small space we can create a dense Miyawaki forest.” Sheeba Sen works for Alaap, a social enterprise working in Uttarakhand to develop Himalayan communities. She was so inspired by Afforestt she cultivated a Miyawaki forest in her backyard in 2017, before working with the state government to plant 40,000 trees in more than 50 villages. “We wanted to scale these projects up so that it generated long-term employment opportunities, instead of the forests being just extractive,” she said. “Locals do depend on it for livelihoods, and are now looking at the large projects of about 300,000 acres that will restore degenerated forest areas – and use Miyawaki forests in the common and catchment areas.” Indian millennials escape big cities for small town lifestyles However, Sharma, having brought Miyawaki forests to India, emphasises that they are not designed to be replacements for natural forests or old-growth trees. “As important as it is to plant new forests, it is more important to conserve old-growth trees, as they are the one that provide seeds for new trees,” Sharma said. “Miyawaki forests are the most authentic versions of a natural forest and for that reason itself should be grown as they will bring back lost forests.”