By Shaun Scott, Puyallup Tribal News
Volunteers donned gloves and grabbed shovels to plant a micro-forest March 27 at the Food Sovereignty Hub located off 66th Avenue in Puyallup.
The Sustainability Department hosted the event, where volunteers planted 20 to 30 different plants provided by the Pierce Conservation District. The plants were arranged in two 40-by-40-foot micro-forests.
Sustainability Manager Kalicia Bean said many of the plants were western red cedar, evergreen huckleberry, salmon berry and Devil’s club.
“It’s great to have great weather today because these plants needed to get into the ground,” Bean said. “Most of them are bare root plants, they can’t just sit in bags. It is exciting to be out here with the community.”
Agroecology Program Coordinator Chris Madden said micro-forest planting is a type of planting where plants are meticulously placed very densely, with three plants planted alongside each other per one square meter.
“What we’re trying to do is get as much plant material into the soil at once to kind of mimic a windfall in a forest and the resprouting of that new growth,” he said. “The way the plants are photosynthesizing light and trading nutrients underneath the soil is what we are trying to duplicate in a dense forest out here. We’re looking for sped up growth because of how densely we are planting this.”
