© 2023 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Page 38 The Earth Scientist

Abstract

According to experts, such as psychotherapist Caroline Hickman (Hickman, 2020), 

climate anxiety in young people can be countered by engaging them in collaborative 

work that binds them to the environment and demonstrates for them the power of 

collective action. Inspired by such work at schools in Brazil, China, and Malaysia, 

and thanks to funding from the NOAA Planet Stewards program, our pre-K-throughtwelfth-grade school built a so-called “Tiny Forest” on our campus in 2022. Tiny 

Forests are dense plantings of native plants in a space about the size of a tennis 

court. Students took key roles in writing the proposal to the school, choosing the 

plants, preparing the ground, and planting. A year later, the Tiny Forest has become 

an outdoor classroom, offering a site for age-appropriate lessons about topics 

ranging from carbon capture to nature poetry. By sharing the positive effects of 

reforestation and species diversification, students could articulate the possibility 

of making small but meaningful impacts on environmental problems. At the Tiny 

Forest we hope our students might experience empowerment rather than anxiety.

The Tiny Forest Project 

Portland, Oregon, home to my school, Catlin Gabel, has 

made worldwide headlines over the past two years, first 

because it briefly had the worst air quality in the world 

due to catastrophic forest fires, and second, because of 

a deadly heat wave in 2021. For students, these events 

came in conjunction with the Coronavirus pandemic and 

many were stuck in houses, learning on Zoom, unable to 

go outside because of hazardous air quality. Like teachers 

everywhere, I have noticed rising worry and anxiety about 

climate change and the disruption it brings. As Anthony 

Leiserowitz, Director of the Yale Program on Climate 

Change Communication, has noted, “worry” can be a 

motivator, but “anxiety” can become “overwhelming and 

debilitating.” (Yale 2023)

A Tiny Forest as an Outdoor 

Classroom and a Place for Hope

Dr. Patrick Walsh, Catlin Gabel School, Portland, Oregon

Image 1. Students from the Environmental Action Team, preparing the soil, 

early 2022. Photo Credit: Patrick Wals

Microforests are small, dense 

patches of forest plants native 

to the location of the forest and 

are being used as a climate 

change solution

Photo Credit: Witney Tree Keepers.
© 2023 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Volume XL, Issue 2 Page 39

Hoping to counter my students’ climate anxiety, 

and inspired by a story I heard on the BBC during 

lockdown, I decided to build a Tiny Forest at my 

school. A grant from the Planet Stewards program 

made this possible. A Tiny Forest is a dense planting 

of 600 native trees and shrubs in an area the size 

of a tennis court. Begun in Japan and now popular 

in Malaysia, Brazil, China, Tiny Forests offer 

opportunities for communities and especially kids to 

reconnect with nature while improving water, soil, 

and air quality. Tiny Forests create a carbon sink, an 

outdoor learning space, and a way to reintroduce 

a diverse range native plants and the animals they 

attract. Because the soil is prepared and the trees are 

planted closely together, the trees grow up to ten times 

faster than usual. Most importantly, Tiny Forests are a 

space for hope and reflection for students. 

My students, colleagues, and I followed the “Miyawaki 

Method” of planting, named for the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki (https://daily.jstor.org/

the-miyawaki-method-a-better-way-to-build-forests/). This way of planting involves specific 

steps; first, learning about the plants native to the specific area of the proposed forest and 

assembling a plant list based on a four-layer model of canopy, understory, shrubs, and 

herbaceous plants or groundcovers; and second, preparing the soil, making it loose and rich 

with no chemical fertilizers and by turning it over down to a meter deep. 

With the generous support of NOAA and a local water district, I purchased 600 native trees, 

shrubs, and groundcovers. After the school grounds crew turned over the soil with a tractor 

and dumped compost on the site, middle-school and high-school students further broke up 

the soil and mixed in the compost. A pair of sophomore girls pounded fence poles into the 

soft earth. I divided the site into twenty small sections with rope and short poles; an online 

sign-up sheet netted almost 200 volunteers. I divided these folks into small groups and gave 

each one a time and a section for our planting day, so the space wouldn’t be crowded, and to 

make sure the volunteers didn’t compact the soil by walking on it too much. 

On February 22, 2022, the volunteers—students, parents, alumni, staff, and faculty—came in 

waves, each group staying for an hour or so while they made a small hole and slipped in their 

sapling or other plant. In accordance with the Miyawaki method, they didn’t tamp down the 

soil, leaving it loose and ready for quick growth. By late afternoon, the forest was planted 

and the final work group helped quickly erect a four-foot metal fence. We wore masks and 

braved a little drizzle, but the mood was light and the morale high. Numerous people told me 

it felt so good to feel like they were doing something to help the earth after almost two years 

of the Covid crisis.

Later that spring, seniors in my elective honors course, “American Environmentalism,” 

made sets of guides for the Tiny Forest, one appropriate for second graders and one suitable 

for eighth graders. Each guide contained information on about twenty species, including 

Indigenous uses for the plants, as well as photos of the Seniors in the Tiny Forest, puzzles, 

and games.

Image 2. Students help plant the 600 trees and shrubs on February 21, 2022

Photo Credit: Tea Bear
© 2023 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Page 40 The Earth Scientist

In the approximately eighteen months since planting day, the Catlin Gabel Tiny Forest has 

grown quickly. While many of the pine and fir trees are still only two to four feet tall, some 

of the understory species, including Black Cottonwood and Red Alder, are already well over 

ten feet high. 

Many Academic Uses 

The Tiny Forest has quickly become a place on campus where students can connect with 

Oregonian flora. This school year, second graders investigated different habitats on campus 

and compared the living things they saw in them. Third graders used the Tiny Forest to learn 

how to spot toxic plant species. Fifth graders investigated which types of plants they might 

successfully grow in our small greenhouse, and visited the Tiny Forest to learn about native 

plants. Tenth graders partnered with first and third graders, meeting in the Tiny Forest, 

choosing a plant to observe closely and, then, together writing poetry about it. 

A Tiny Forest Lesson: the Cross-Grade Tour

Another cross-grade use of the Tiny Forest was led by middle-school teachers Berkeley 

Gadbaw and Christa Kaainoa. The idea behind the assignment was to link students’ 

experience with the climate fiction they had read in Christa’s seventh-grade English classes 

with the climate change unit in Berkeley’s eighth-grade science course. The science students 

ultimately led their younger peers on tours of the Tiny Forest and of some woodland nearby. 

For all the students, the same key goals were in place:

■ Connect student classroom learning with experiences outside. 

■ Engineer experiences in which students teach students about fighting 

climate change.

■ Encourage students to bond deeply with the natural environments on campus. 

In order to prepare for the tours, Berkeley’s eighth-grade students began with what she calls 

“Wonder Walks.” For several days, part of their classroom time was spent outside, sitting 

and sketching the plants they saw. Berkeley’s goal is to establish a connection with nature 

before students are compelled to learn “facts” about the plants. Berkeley then instructed 

Image 3. A Student Identifies Plants at the Tiny Forest, 2023

Photo Credit: Teresa Walsh

Image 4. “Beaked Hazelnut.” Watercolor by student Eve Cody, 202
© 2023 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Volume XL, Issue 2 Page 41

them in the layers of the forest; students used Tiny Forest guides (made by high school 

students in the Spring of 2022) to learn how to identify most of its forty-plus species. From 

the guides, they also learned about the interdependence between species in various layers of 

the forest as well as Indigenous uses for many of the plants.

Next, students returned to the Tiny Forest with the goal of 

calculating carbon capture during its early years. All the 

eighth graders measured the circumference of existing trees 

in established forest, specifically Western Red Cedar, Douglas 

Fir, and Big Leaf Maple. They tagged twenty individual trees for 

measurements in future years. Using a great handout from the 

New York Sea Grant (NYSG) and the Paleontological Research 

Institution (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UV_HNr-EwD4I_

xZM9QfMRNVeQUx4oRVL/view?usp=sharing), students 

derived the trees’ biomass from their measurements. Students 

read a graph that shows a species’ diameter to biomass ratio, and 

then divided the biomass by two to discover how much of the 

tree was carbon. From this they derived the amount of carbon 

dioxide. They then practiced online graphing tools to indicate 

their findings. 

This baseline of data will be used for the future, something 

the students could feel proud of. Finally, the eighth graders 

learned about heat islands and their links to historic racial 

inequality. (Portland is among the cities with the greatest heat 

differences between neighborhoods.) With a new understanding 

of the connection between the built environment and heat, the 

eighth graders grabbed clipboards and digital thermometers and 

measured the temperature in several places on campus, including 

the main parking lot and the Tiny Forest. They cataloged their 

results and then discussed where in Portland the next Tiny Forest 

might be planted to most effectively lower the temperature and 

provide shade where it is most needed.

Importance of forests

By the end of the unit, the eighth graders had been in the forest 

every single day for three weeks. First, they had had outdoor, direct 

instruction from Berkeley. “Being out there exceeds anything I 

can do in the classroom, even if I don’t have a particular agenda,” 

Berkeley said. Students then had time to sit in a different place 

every day, always with a physical journal to take notes and record 

reflection. In those weeks, they learned about the importance of 

forests in regulating the earth’s temperature and harboring its 

biodiversity. They became experts on their own campus; they can 

point out a number of the trees and shrubs that shade the school, 

and they have found favorite places outside of the classroom to 

sit and write. 

Image 5. Relative Predicted Biomass for a Number of Key Tiny 

Forest Species. Source: NYC Stem Summer Institute: Climate to Go

Image 6. Beginning a Baseline. Photo Credit: Patrick Wals
© 2023 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Page 42 The Earth Scientist

Results

In the spring of 2023, eighth-grade students from the Catlin Gabel Middle School learned 

about topics relevant to the Tiny Forest: the Greenhouse Effect, biodiversity, native plants, 

and heat islands. After three weeks of outdoor instruction and observation, the students led 

small groups of seventh graders on nature walks, through campus and to the Tiny Forest, in 

order to share what they had learned. 

In many ways, the cross-grade tour was really the culmination of the assignment. This was 

the best and most meaningful forum for the students to demonstrate their knowledge. The 

conversation during the tour was the assessment, the transfer task. But since the instructor 

couldn’t be present during the entirety of every tour, and because the interaction between 

students of different grades has a value a classroom test does not, she was satisfied with 

feedback from the seventh-grade students after they have been led around the Tiny Forest 

by the eighth graders and relevant areas of the broader campus. Each guest on each tour 

had a checklist so the instructor could see if any topics were omitted. She also asked the tour 

guides to turn in all their documentation. Eighth graders were required to fill out and hand 

in a guided note sheet (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m8D6gNgcaQMhnqZUolTA0

RNYr7jXO8qaAJw2Fz98YuU/edit?usp=sharing). Later, Berkeley quizzed the students on the 

content of the tour. 

Berkeley and Christa were not with the students on their walks and couldn’t correct errors 

from student tour guides or make sure every student remained focused on the task at hand. 

Yet entrusting students to teach their peers has more than enough value to offset the lack 

of teacher control. By having the eighth graders become “tour guides,” Berkeley and Christa 

compelled them to take “ownership” of the Tiny Forest and share its value with younger 

members of the community. 

Conclusions

The activities surrounding the Tiny Forest provided students 

with ways to experience how human activities have altered the 

biosphere and to provide avenues for positive action. 

As Berkeley shared with me, it’s hard to teach climate change 

and not be pessimistic, ”even,” she noted, “with a pageful 

of solutions.” She’s right: showing students how shifting 

diets away from red meat or creating a national market on 

Greenhouse Gas emissions can often exacerbate student 

anxiety because of our inability, working individually, to make 

the shifts necessary to prevent catastrophic changes during our 

students’ lifetimes. Berkeley went on to explain that this project 

was a viable way of lessening climate anxiety by connecting 

kids to nature and to give them time and structure to notice 

how learning about their environment feels empowering and 

motivating. The lesson links students to particular plants 

at the school. Understanding the positive impact of careful 

reforestation through the calculation of carbon captured by 

trees in the Tiny Forest gives students the opportunity to appreciate the importance of 

beauty on the campus in a new way and affords their teachers the chance to tell the kids it’s 

not too late to make meaningful change. 

Connections to the Next Generation Science 

Standards (NGSS, 2013)

Performance Expectation

MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for

monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment

Disciplinary Core Idea

• ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems: Human activities

have significantly altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging or 

destroying natural habitats and causing the extinction of other 

species. Changes to Earth’s environments can have different

impacts (negative and positive) for different living things

Cross-Cutting Concept

• Influence of Science, Engineering, and Technology on Society 

and the Natural World: All human activity draws on natural 

resources and has both short and long-term consequences, 

positive as well as negative, for the health of people and the 

natural environment. (MS-ESS3-4
© 2023 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Volume XL, Issue 2 Page 43

Learning about Indigenous uses for native plants, 

and then sharing that knowledge with other young 

people, potentially offers hope in the form of a 

historical connection to Nature. Realizing that 

other civilizations have flourished in the same place 

suggests there are other ways to live besides our 

shared American culture and its reliance on fossil 

fuels. More importantly, perhaps, is the lesson 

that climate change can best be addressed through 

collective action, such as the construction of a Tiny 

Forest. By planting trees in historically underserved 

areas which are so often also heat islands, 

communities can make a real difference in how their 

neighbors, especially people of color and those with 

the fewest economic resources, will experience their 

daily lives in the decades to come. 

References

Hickman, Caroline and Elouise Mayall. 2020. Minerva 

series: Climate Change, Coronavirus and Anxiety. 

University of Bath. Vimeo. July 10, 2020. https://

vimeo.com/showcase/5413701/video/442745768.

NGSS Lead States. 2013. Next Generation Science 

Standards: For States, By States. https://www.

nextgenscience.org/search-standards

Will, Madeline. 2022. Teens Are Struggling With Climate 

Anxiety. Schools Haven’t Caught Up Yet. Education 

Week. December 7, 2022. https://www.edweek.

org/leadership/teens-are-struggling-with-climateanxiety-schools-havent-caught-up-yet/2022/12.

Yale Sustainability. 2023 Yale Experts Explain 

Climate Anxiety. Yale Sustainability. March 13, 

2023. https://sustainability.yale.edu/explainers/

yale-experts-explain-climate-anxiety.

Image 7. The Catlin Gabel Tiny Forest, June 2023, Sixteen Months Since Planting

Photo Credit: Patrick Walsh

About the Author

Dr. Patrick J. Walsh is the Chair of Social Studies at Catlin Gabel School 

in Portland, Oregon, where he has taught for seventeen years. At Catlin

Gabel, he teaches courses on Civics, American Studies, Globalization, 

and Environmentalism. Patrick holds a Ph.D. from the University 

Texas at Austin, where his graduate work focused on counter-cultural 

communities and movements in the twentieth-century American West

He has been granted two Fulbright awards, one to teach American 

Studies at the University of Passau in Germany and a Distinguished 

Award in Teaching grant for research in Finland. Patrick can be reached

at walshp@catlin.ed

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Sep 12, 2023 Don’t Look Up 

Oct 10, 2023 Diary of a Young Naturalist

Nov 14, 2023 There’s Something in the Water: Environmental 

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Dec 12, 2023 Escape Undersea 

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Feb 13, 2024 Engage, Connect, and Protect: Empowering 

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Mar 12, 2024 The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is 

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Apr 9, 2024 Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: 

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May 14, 2024 Fen, Bog & Swamp 

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