Connecticut Land Conservation Conference

Aspetuck Land Trust has long been a supporter of bringing Bridgeport schools to our forests for educational hikes, but the idea of bringing OUR forests to the schools was a unique and groundbreaking idea that only Micro-Forests, using the Miyawaki Method, could do. The CT Department of Agriculture agreed that this was a potential climate smart practice that could supercharge the city with the lowest tree canopy in the state. By planting small forests of different sizes at 7 schools in Bridgeport, we could test this Miyawaki Method of forestry for the first time in CT. A small but mighty forest of native trees and shrubs could, in theory, capture carbon, manage stormwater, cool the air, and improve biodiversity at a rate 3x that of a traditional forest and with a higher collective impact than street trees alone. Learn how the method was implemented and the data collected.