What is a MicroForest?
SURF’s microforests may look like small groves or thickets but they implement some late-breaking scientific innovations to grow remarkably fast and provide exceptional ecological benefits such as regional cooling, flood prevention, and carbon sequestration against climate change. The extrordinary growth rate of a high-performance microforest explains why it uses so much otherwise problematic water (flooding and coastal water pollution), why it relocates so much CO2 from the atmosphere (where it’s bad) to the soil (where it’s good), and why it creates “a hundred year forest in just ten years.” The rapid growth rate happens because of shade competion resulting from the dense placement and the exceptional vigor and survivorship attributes to our “mulch-cardboard layercake” that we place to suppress turf and create a perfect soil.
What We’ve Done So Far
Suncoast Urban ReForesters (SURF) has raised funds for, planned, and planted seven high-performance microforests in Sarasota and Manatee Counties. We have five more in progress, including two for sound abatement that serve as living walls.
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Volunteer day at Heritage Harbour
Before we plant a forest, we prepare a simulated florest floor by laying down sheet cardboard and layering six inches of recycled woodchip mulch on top.
The Stoneybrook Microforest installation
Here are volunteers are mixing a special soil made of compost and biochar to insert in each planting pocket to give our plants an early boost
Community Action to Reforest Our Depleted Landscapes
Every forest is a community project that engages our founding nonprofits as well as schools, churches, or clubs, plus support from government programs such as the Master Gardener Volunteers and the Neighborhood Environmental Stewardship Teams (NEST)
Our first installation – the Celery Fields
Our first forest -- a half-acre gem -- was planted in October 2020 at the Celery Fields, a popular park in Sarasota County. It already has one tropical storm and one hurricane under its belt.
Community Action to Reforest Our Depleted Landscapes
Microforests engage community interest and volunteerism, creating ownership in an asset that will serve generations of future residents. Here we see residents of Stoneybrook Golf and County Club working shoulder-to-shoulder with local students and environmentalists in a gratifying and educational partnership.
SURF's process engages volunteers of all ages to "do the fun part" of reforestation because each site is fully prepared (holes drilled and plants staged) for planting by the time volunteers arrive. "all the fun and none of the trouble."
Volunteer day at Heritage Harbour
Volunteers learn how tree-planting and forest-building is the best thing we can do to combat climate change and improve environmental quality
How You Can Help
For SURF to fulfil its mission of planting microforests and living walls throughout the Suncoast, we need partners who will identify sites, organize volunteers, and help us usher a forest from inception to inauguration. Come join us on the joyful journey of creating a forest for the future.
Nominate a site
If you know an area of turf the size of a baseball diamond or as big as a whole baseball field that doesn't need to be turf, tell us about it. We will forever end the need to mow, water, and fertilize, instead converting that ecological desert into a rich multi-strata forest that is great for humans and wildlife alike
Help with site preparation and planting
Our most dedicated volunteers come out early in the development of a microforest for a job that is necessary, if less immediately rewarding, than actually installing the plants. Here we have college students, master gardeners, and residents of Heritage Harbour working hard on mulching day -- laying cardboard and raking woodchips to create a "simulated forest floor," under which fungi will grow and soil will develop
Raise Awareness
We have recently been planting microforests in long narrow rectangles to become living walls that provide all the usual ecological benefits but also block sound and improve views
Find or Volunteer Land
Suncoasters sometimes get discouraged that all the fast-paced development is displacing wildlife, deterioriating coast water quality and increaing flood risk. Well, it is! But microforest can offset those damages with high-powered habitats for wildlife, stormwater retention, and climate adaptation. Whether it leads to a new microforest or not, we love to meet with people and groups to tell them about our program. Please reach out to info@suncoastforesters.org to request a call, zoom, meeting, or tour.
Obtain Long-term Commitment
The best way to support fundraising is to fully develop a project opportunity - an area of turf ready to be planted with trees instead - by ensuring that the owner understands the benefits of a microforest and agrees that the trees. once planted, will never be cut down.
Learn the science
The full name for a microforest is high-performance microforest. This reflects that microforests provide such enormous ecological and social benefits such as intercepting stormwater that would otherwise cause flooding or pollution of coastal waters; cooling against urban heat island, accommodating wildlife, and sequestering carbon against climate change. Microforests are the ultimate tools for enhancing urban resilience. The reason microforests provide such prodigious benefits is because they grow so fast. The scientist Akira Miyawaki learned that by planting trees, shrubs, and ground species close to each other, you foster competition that promotes rapid plant growth so that individuals don’t get shaded or crowded out.
Miyawaki enthusiasts assert that high-performance microforests grow into a hundred year forest in just ten years!
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