Broulee Students Create Microforest in School Playground

Students at a local school on the NSW Far South Coast are trading in their schoolbooks for tree saplings in an effort to boost biodiversity in their playground. Year 4 students from St Peter's Anglican College at Broulee have spent the past week transforming a barren patch of their playground into a self-sustaining microforest.

The students have planted around 1,000 native plants as part of a unique project to create a cooler, greener space. The plants are native to the region's endangered coastal littoral rainforest.

A Project to Boost Biodiversity

"We're trying to bring back some of those endangered species that were lost in the 2020 bushfires, which was really unfortunate for all of our native animals and plants," year 4 student Zale Neal said.

"It feels really calming to plant all these plants, and to know that when we get older, we can have a microforest and say to our kids we've done that."

The school is the first in NSW to partner with not-for-profit organisation Microforest Collective to research, design and plant a microforest as part of the curriculum.

What is a Microforest?

Microforests, or tiny forests, are dense patches of native vegetation planted in urban or degraded areas, often no bigger than a tennis court. Microforest Collective co-founder and landscape architect Edwina Robinson said the project used a Japanese planting technique known as the Miyawaki method.

"Forests take hundreds of years to develop, but with this method we're actually short circuiting a lot of that," Ms Robinson said.

The method involves densely planting a mixture of local species to accelerate growth. Ms Robinson said the method helped the plants grow up to 10 times faster than normal, with the microforest expected to reach about 7 metres in height within two to three years.

A Community Effort

The school project uses a water-harvesting system designed to overcome the site's sandy soil. About 40 metres of underground trenches have been lined with clay to capture rainwater.

Year 4 teacher Danielle Phillips said the group visited local rainforests, identified species and researched the conditions different plants needed to survive, before picking up gardening gloves.

"When we were looking at the area that we were going to plant, how big is the area? What are we going to do regarding the amount of mulch? OK, well, let's work out the volume," Ms Phillips said.

"These kids are learning social emotional skills out here. How they connect, how they communicate, how they work as a team, what happens when things get challenging."

A Model for Other Schools

The collective now plans to use the project as a model for other schools. Chair Jo Abbott said members had worked with the school's teachers to develop design templates and programs.

"If a school decided to take on a forest, they would be able to pick up these ready-to-go curriculum programs and then implement them within their school environment," she said.

"They are kids that spend a lot of time in nature, and enjoy being out doing hard work."