The thousand-foot parcel of grassy, vacant land was just sitting there, at the edge of Rochester, near the Department of Public Works and a community garden. It wasn’t even a garbage dump anymore; it was a former garbage dump.

While researching monarch butterfly habitat restoration, Councilmember Marilyn Trent (who is also the founder of Rochester Pollinators) discovered the Miyawaki Method of urban land restoration through a course offered by Canadian Green Communities. “The course was only an hour, so I took it,” she says.

Developed by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, the Miyawaki Method entails dense plantings of native tree species in small, targeted areas. This is intended to mimic the regeneration patterns of natural forests, creating multi-layered “pocket forests” that grow much faster and are much more biodiverse than traditional monoculture plantings.

Inspired, Trent brought the idea to the attention of Rochester’s Tree Committee. Sitting on the Tree Committee is Jeanine Krupp, the chairperson of City Beautiful, which ended up helping to plan and coordinate the project.

The idea was immediately popular, being voted upon by Rochester residents for the City to pursue. Having been planted just this spring, the Rochester Mini Forest is the City of Rochester’s entry for the 2026 Community Excellence Award.

The final price tag on the project was $11,000, which went to buy the plants and soil. This was paid with two grants: a Banksgiving award from First State Bank, and a Community Enhancement Grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Rochester. “The [City of Rochester] DPW and Parks [Department] rolled it into their costs to remediate the soil,” says Trent.

“What they said was, ‘This is a city project, and it is for the city,’” adds Mayor Nancy Salvia. “So, that was their contribution.”

“Serendipitously, there was an environmental…I guess, scientist? On the DPW,” says Trent. This was Kerri Martin, a DPW employee who has a background in environmental biology and forestry. It was Martin who mapped out the planting plan for 290 native plants, including 52 canopy trees, 106 understory trees, and 132 shrubs. In total, 36 native species were represented in the planting.

“I want to talk about the Mother Tree,” announces Salvia suddenly. The first tree planted in the Rochester mini forest—on Arbor Day—the Mother Tree is a red maple (acer rubrum) that functions as a hub of sorts for the mycorrhizal fungi network that supports the entire forest system.

“Think of the tree in Avatar,” she says. “If a tree is attacked by pests or it’s stressed out, it sends chemical signals through the network, and the nearby trees receive the warning, and it boosts their defenses.”

“It has women’s intuition,” she laughs.

The rest of the plants were scheduled to go in the ground on May 3, and “an army showed up,” says Trent. About forty Rochester residents of all ages helped with the planting—gardeners, members of the Stoney Creek Daughters of the American Revolution, local high school students, scouts, parents with their children. An older couple brought food for the volunteers while they worked.

“We put out a call to our volunteer corps and found ten people who had some expertise in planting trees to serve as team leaders,” writes Michelle Berry Lane, a Rochester Pollinators representative who helped coordinate volunteers. “The day was chilly and windy, but we all basked in the warmth of one another and good work done together to make a space for diverse, non-human lives to flourish in our midst.”

“The experience on planting day was fantastic,” says Councilmember Christian Hauser. “The City Beautiful people had done so much work in advance. They put it into quadrants … You randomly picked a plot, [which] was specific that you knew what you were planting, but they left it up to the individual planters to have some discretion as to where it was gonna go.”

For their hard work, volunteers got a sense of civic pride and environmental euphoria, plus a small piece of swag: A pin that reads “I planted a mini forest.”

A crew from Detroit-based Baby Volcano Films, who had learned about the project through the Banksgiving grant, came to document the planting for their upcoming documentary, One Nation Under Sod. “It’s a humorous documentary about how goofy we get with lawns,” says Salvia. “It made you feel like you’re a movie star.”

Although it will be three years before it is fully self-sustaining (at which point benches will be put in nearby for residents to linger), Rochester’s mini forest is already absorbing hundreds of pounds of carbon dioxide and tens of thousands of gallons of rainwater annually, and supporting over five hundred species of pollinators. It’s also become a treasured and emotionally significant local landmark. Two of the volunteers, a mother and daughter, still visit the forest when they have disagreements—it gives them a sense of perspective, and of shared connection.

Southeast Michigan is now home at least seven mini forests. (Also called micro-forests. Or pocket forests. “We use all of them,” says Trent.) Neighboring municipalities have expressed interest in developing their own; Rochester is giving a tour of the site on June 7.

“A Rochester, New York councilmember called us, as well,” says Trent.

To sum things up, Salvia quotes from Trent’s favorite book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Suzanne Simard: “This micro forest is ‘not just a collection of isolated organisms, but it is a web of constantly evolving relationships.’”

“Truly, this mini forest is symbolic of our Rochester community,” she says, with a smile.

Author

Emily Pinsuwan

Emily is the League’s full-time Content Writer, composing emails, articles, blog posts, and press releases. If you need words, she has many. Prior to becoming a word person, she was a restaurant person, handling catering, event management, and marketing; prior still, she was a teaching person, at a private boarding school in Massachusetts. Having earned a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Georgia, Emily is confident that she is the only League employee fluent in Latin. She also enjoys cooking, stand-up comedy, and is an avid gamer, having achieved level 40 on her Steam profile.