Skip to main content

Method overview

Restoring land is not the same as planting trees: tree-cover targets get hit while biodiversity stays flat, and seedlings put in without the rest of the system behind them fail (booming restoration, flat biodiversity, news; why repairing forests is not just planting trees, study). The work is to bring back a whole ecosystem — soil, water, plants, and the animals that follow — working with natural processes and adding only what the land cannot supply itself.

Non-negotiables​

  • Native species, in mixtures, matched to the site — never monocultures.
  • Least intervention that works; help the land heal itself first.
  • Measure and learn, failures included.
  • People and local knowledge are part of the method.

Approaches (choose by site and goal)​

  • Assisted natural regeneration — protect and nudge what regrows on its own. Cheapest and toughest; slower, less predictable (natural regrowth's potential, news).
  • Dense native planting (Miyawaki) — many species planted close for fast, layered cover. Quick but labour- and seedling-heavy.
  • Perma-forestry / syntropic agroforestry — a productive, layered system that yields food while it restores. Engaging; needs knowledge and steady work.
  • Rewilding — restore natural processes and missing species, then step back. Resilient and low-effort; slow and hard to direct (rewilding and restoration, study).
  • Indigenous and traditional methods — practices that kept land productive for generations, like Amazonian forest gardens. Place-specific; need real relationships, not extracted techniques (indigenous-led corridors, news).

Most projects blend several; the choice follows the site, not fashion. Combining targeted interventions tends to deliver more than any single one (multiple interventions enhance multifunctionality, study).

The five pillars​

Reforestation, soil, water, biodiversity, and community. Not steps in sequence — soil, water, and plants recover together, with people throughout.

Learning as you go​

Every choice is a prediction about a specific piece of land, and only the land can confirm it. Treat plantings as experiments: write down what you expect, set success and failure criteria in advance, then measure. What you learn updates the method for the next attempt, and for anyone who copies it.