Chapter 6: Miyawaki Forests Around the World – Real-World Success Stories

Having spent several chapters explaining the theoretical brilliance, practical implementation, and maintenance requirements of Miyawaki forests—not to mention making a moderately guilt-inducing appeal for your active participation—we now offer the academic equivalent of dessert: delicious success stories that validate everything you've just digested. Like the ecological version of those before-and-after transformation photos that fitness influencers use to sell questionable supplements, these case studies demonstrate that the Miyawaki method actually works in real-world conditions across diverse contexts. More importantly, they provide tangible evidence that humans occasionally manage to implement good ideas instead of merely discussing them at conferences while ecosystems continue to collapse.

Danehy Park, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Academia Plants Trees Instead of Just Publishing About Them

In the intellectual epicenter of the United States, where Harvard and MIT academics routinely produce papers about environmental degradation that nobody outside academia reads, something remarkable happened in 2019: actual trees were planted. A coalition of environmental groups, local schools, and volunteers who somehow found time in their busy schedules of complaining about climate change on social media created a Miyawaki forest in a previously barren corner of Danehy Park, a 50-acre urban green space in Cambridge.

The project's success stems partly from its community-driven approach, which cleverly disguised manual labor as educational opportunity. Local schools incorporated the forest into their curricula, allowing students to experience the character-building combination of ecological learning and dirt-covered clothing. The resulting forest now hosts a diverse native ecosystem supporting local wildlife that had previously been forced to make do with Harvard Square dumpsters and abandoned Starbucks cups.

Perhaps most impressively, this forest has achieved what countless academic papers and policy proposals have failed to accomplish: inspiring actual replication. Surrounding neighborhoods have taken notice, with local organizations using it as a model for similar initiatives—proving that even in a region dominated by people who consider themselves too intellectual for gardening, getting one's hands dirty in ecological restoration holds surprising appeal.

Yokohama National University, Japan: Students Plant Something Besides Career Expectations

At Yokohama National University in Japan, one of the earliest large-scale academic Miyawaki forests demonstrates that universities can occasionally produce something more tangible than graduates with crippling student debt. This forest represents the university's commitment to environmental education and sustainability, conveniently doubling as a living advertisement for prospective students whose parents worry about climate change.

The project's location in a bustling urban environment makes it particularly noteworthy, demonstrating how the Miyawaki method can squeeze nature into spaces more typically reserved for convenience stores and vending machines. Through collaboration between students, faculty, and local environmental organizations, over 30,000 trees were planted in a configuration so dense it would violate personal space norms in any social context. This botanical crowding created a rich, biodiverse habitat in just a few years—considerably faster than most academic initiatives, which typically require several decades and multiple grant renewals to produce measurable results.

Beyond providing valuable green space for campus inhabitants, this forest serves as an educational tool infinitely more engaging than PowerPoint presentations on environmental degradation. Students encounter the forest daily, absorbing lessons about biodiversity and ecological restoration through proximity rather than required reading. The forest functions as a living laboratory, providing data on urban Miyawaki forest development while simultaneously giving environmental science students something to include in their thesis projects besides literature reviews and apocalyptic predictions.

Nippon Steel and Honda Corporate Campuses, Japan: Corporations Attempt to Balance Karma

In perhaps the most intriguing application of the Miyawaki method, Japanese industrial giants Nippon Steel and Honda have embraced forest creation as the corporate equivalent of carbon offset purchasing—a way to partially compensate for their otherwise substantial environmental impacts. These projects represent sophisticated greenwashing at its finest, combining genuine ecological benefits with excellent publicity opportunities and shareholder placation.

Nippon Steel's campus forest exemplifies industrial redemption narratives, transforming a portion of formerly degraded land into a functioning ecosystem through the botanical equivalent of an extreme makeover. The forest has rapidly developed into a biodiverse habitat, mitigating the urban heat island effect while providing employees with tangible evidence that their employer occasionally considers priorities beyond quarterly profits. The before-and-after contrast proves particularly dramatic given the company's primary business of turning natural resources into industrial materials.

Similarly, Honda's corporate campus features a Miyawaki forest that serves as both environmental initiative and three-dimensional sustainability report. Long recognized for environmental leadership (at least relative to other automobile manufacturers, which admittedly sets the bar somewhere near ground level), Honda's forest provides employees with nature connection opportunities without requiring them to actually leave work premises, thereby maintaining productivity while creating the illusion of work-life balance.

Both projects demonstrate how corporations can leverage the Miyawaki method to enhance sustainability credentials while creating Instagram-worthy backdrops for annual reports. These initiatives serve as models for other businesses seeking to appear environmentally responsible without fundamentally altering their business models or addressing their core environmental impacts—the corporate sustainability equivalent of ordering a diet soda with your supersized fast food meal.

Mini Forests in Paris – The Chevilly Larue Project: French-Sized Forests with French-Sized Attitude

Europeans have embraced mini-Miyawaki forests with the same enthusiasm they bring to tiny apartments, compact cars, and judging American portion sizes. Among the most notable Parisian projects is the mini forest in Chevilly Larue, a suburb where the local government collaborated with environmental groups to transform an underutilized plot into a thriving ecological showcase that manages to be simultaneously smaller yet somehow more sophisticated than its American counterparts.

Planted in 2018, this pocket forest rapidly became a symbol of the city's commitment to sustainability, providing habitat for local wildlife while giving Parisians yet another thing to feel superior about when comparing their city to others. The project's success sparked a wave of similar installations throughout Paris, with mini forests becoming as trendy as natural wine bars and philosophical debates in street cafés.

These compact urban forests represent a broader European movement to reintegrate nature into cities, increase biodiversity, and combat climate change while maintaining the distinctly European ability to make ecological restoration seem fashionable rather than merely necessary. The Chevilly Larue project demonstrates how even small interventions can create meaningful impact, particularly when implemented with the characteristic French combination of aesthetic sensitivity and environmental pragmatism.

Porte d'Asnières, Paris: Concrete Jungle Transforms into Actual Jungle

In Paris's Porte d'Asnières district, a once-vacant concrete expanse has been transformed into a thriving Miyawaki forest, proving that urban renewal doesn't necessarily require another luxury apartment complex or boutique hotel. This ambitious project aimed to regenerate the area's ecosystem, reduce air pollution, and create wildlife habitat in a neighborhood previously known primarily for its impressive collection of urban dust and scattered cigarette butts.

The forest exemplifies how Miyawaki plantings can function as "green lungs" in densely populated urban areas—a metaphor that seems particularly appropriate in a city where actual human lungs regularly process air of questionable quality. The trees provide shade and cooling in a metropolis that experiences the urban heat island effect with the same intensity that it embraces fashion trends and dismissive shrugs.

This project highlights the transformative potential of converting neglected spaces into ecological assets, demonstrating how cities can integrate nature into built environments without requiring residents to sacrifice their cherished metropolitan identities or access to artisanal baked goods. The forest has become a focal point of the district, attracting both local residents seeking respite from urban intensity and environmental enthusiasts eager to document its development on social media platforms.

Nelson Mandela Park, Saint-Priest: Naming Things After Mandela Continues to Be Popular

The suburb of Saint-Priest near Lyon, France, joined the Miyawaki movement by creating a mini forest in Nelson Mandela Park—combining ecological restoration with the globally popular practice of naming things after the revered South African leader. This vibrant green space emerged from an area once dominated by urban sprawl and concrete, proving that suburbs can occasionally produce something more interesting than conformity and commuter traffic.

Planted in 2020 through collaboration between environmental activists and municipal government (a partnership roughly as natural as cats and dogs working together), the forest aimed to restore local ecosystems while providing residents an opportunity to experience nature without the inconvenience of actually leaving the city. The project has created habitat for wildlife while serving as a green oasis in an otherwise architecturally uninspired landscape.

The Nelson Mandela Park forest demonstrates how even modest-sized urban forests can significantly impact local communities, improving quality of life while creating environmental benefits that extend beyond their physical boundaries. It serves as yet another example of how the Miyawaki method can transform urban spaces—and how naming environmental projects after universally respected historical figures helps bypass potential opposition from even the most development-oriented politicians.

Conclusion: A Global Movement That Occasionally Lives Up to Its Own Hype

These diverse projects demonstrate that Miyawaki forests actually work in the real world, transforming landscapes across continents while adapting to various cultural contexts, climatic conditions, and available space constraints. From corporate campuses in Japan to urban parks in Massachusetts to fashionable Parisian neighborhoods, the method has proven remarkably versatile and effective—a rare example of an environmental intervention that delivers tangible results within timeframes compatible with human attention spans and political cycles.

The global proliferation of these forests offers compelling evidence that the Miyawaki method transcends its theoretical foundations to create functioning ecosystems in contexts ranging from the thoroughly degraded to the merely uninspiring. Each successful implementation adds to a growing body of practical knowledge while inspiring additional projects, creating a virtuous cycle of ecological restoration that spreads through demonstration rather than mere advocacy.

As these forests mature, they provide increasingly valuable data on long-term development patterns, ecosystem services, and maintenance requirements across diverse settings. This practical knowledge complements theoretical understanding, creating a more robust foundation for future implementations while refining best practices for specific contexts. The living laboratories established through these pioneering projects continue generating insights that no greenhouse experiment or computer model could provide, demonstrating yet again that actually implementing ecological restoration reveals complexities and possibilities that theory alone cannot anticipate.

The global Miyawaki movement represents a rare instance where human intervention in natural systems produces positive rather than catastrophic results—a refreshing deviation from our species' typical environmental impact. As these forests continue spreading across landscapes damaged by urbanization, industrial development, and agricultural intensification, they create tangible demonstrations that ecological restoration remains possible even in severely degraded contexts. They offer living proof that humanity occasionally manages to implement solutions commensurate with the environmental challenges we've created—a small but significant reason for optimism in an ecological moment otherwise characterized by decline, degradation, and despair.

Perhaps most importantly, these successful implementations transform Miyawaki forestry from theoretical possibility to proven practice, moving the approach from the category of "interesting ideas worth considering someday" to "demonstrated solutions ready for widespread adoption now." In a world where environmental problems continue accumulating faster than solutions, these tangible successes provide something increasingly precious: evidence that positive change remains possible when knowledge combines with action, even in the most unlikely places.