Seeding Pocket-Sized Forests to Mimic Old-Growth Biodiversity with Elise Van Middelem

Exploring green infrastructure and nature-based solutions to transform our climate future.

Elise Van Middelem is the Founder and CEO of SUGi, an innovative social enterprise dedicated to greening cities and reimagining urban spaces through Nature-based Solutions. To date, SUGi has created over 230 self-sustaining ultra-dense forests of native-only species in 53 cities worldwide (from Beirut to London, New York City to the Yakama Nation), employing the proven Miyawaki Method to restore biodiversity, enhance climate resilience, and strengthen community wellbeing.

Elise is guided by a deep belief in nature’s power to heal and connect, a vision she brings to life through SUGi's growing network of biodiversity builders. Her work inspires individuals and communities to take meaningful action in restoring ecosystems and renewing their relationship with the natural world.

This interview has been transcribed from audio, with some revised sections.

INL: What inspired you to start SUGi?

Elise: So, really, let's say about six years ago, I was one of these people overwhelmed by the problem. At that time, I knew I wanted to stop talking about it and act upon it. And I knew I loved trees—I have this obsession with trees and forests. Also, having lived in San Francisco and being able to escape the city and go into that ancient [Redwood] forest¹—that pocket of ancestral forest… every time I came out of it, I had this sensation of reconnecting, of really being… everything was fine; the world felt fine. At that time, I was moving back to Europe, and I thought, I want to do something right where we live and work.

The idea didn't come at once. I first went through a whole research trying to understand where the millions of trees were being planted, because back in 2018, there was a movement of planting millions of trees, but I wondered: where and how are they planted, and what are they actually doing for the ecosystems? Then, after this journey of research, I came across the Miyawaki method². For me, that was a revolutionary approach—it gave the ability to create, on minimal space, maximum diversity, and it also was highly adaptable as a method of planting in cities.

You could take any space, de-pave it, transform it; you could take an urban biodiversity desert and make it into a lush, wild, native habitat—for birds to sing, for the soil to regenerate. That idea of bringing back what was once there… you know, most of our cities are built upon forests… that really inspired me, and that led me to creating SUGi.

I mean, the journey wasn't linear. I started with one pocket forest in Beirut³, of all places, and then somehow got the taste for it. Today, we are 250 pocket forests in.

Danehy Park Forest in Massachusetts, USA.

INL: Can you explain what a “pocket forest” is?

Elise: First of all, they're based upon the Miyawaki method. It is a scientific method, and the idea is to bring back what was once there. It's to start with the soil, plant densely, use native species only, mulch heavily, and create an ecosystem—a habitat. Then, in two or three years, you have a self-sustaining forest.

Think about it this way: we do not plant trees. We create micro-ecosystems. When we approach a project—anywhere, and mostly in cities—we will look at an area of land as a whole and then plant all the species together. In that way, you create a collaboration. You create communication underground and above ground, maybe some competition. Because of that, in 20 years, you can have [an ecosystem that mimics] a 200-year-old forest.

Car Park Forest in Mechelen, Belgium.

INL: Who typically initiates these projects with SUGi—the local community, government officials, or other groups?

Elise: This is a really good question. Think about it this way: SUGi is a grassroots movement. At the time that we started back in 2019, the concept of planting densely and creating pocket forests was really not known, or very little known. So we started grassroots; we actually started with community groups. The way we made it possible for these forests today to exist in cities is that we worked a lot with schools, because the grounds were available there. And then you immediately touch upon this idea of “citizen scientists” by bringing the green into the schoolyard, by creating outdoor classrooms, and with that reconnection to nature.

But for us, what made it possible is with the community groups and finding the land, we then matched that to brand partners. Because funding is essential here, right? We can't just count on land and then plant; we have to have somebody that will underwrite this with us and actually choose to go for green infrastructure and biodiversity rather than just planting trees. So, in the first three years, it was really interesting, we were able to create a proof of concept, and I think we were about 180 pocket [forests] in. Today, in London alone, we have 30 projects. Now, that is not only through community groups… Over time and really working locally, we were able to work with the councils.

It starts to show today, right? What do our cities really need? What is the biggest threat to cities? From what we see and from the news, it's heat and flooding. Seeing that and working with the councils in London, like Barking and Dagenham and Newham—they're very prone to flooding. They came to us and said, ‘Look, we've seen what we've done over three years; the proof of concept is there. We understand pocket forests now, because even though it was very new, we had to be able to show it.’ And that really helped to further our message. With a beautiful partnership that we solidified with the Council of Newham, we have now planted pocket forests in nine schools, which are a key part of the Just Transition Plan⁴. The plan is focused on biodiversity, well-being, and climate resilience—and these are the core values of SUGi.

Planning the Ancestral Forest in Pattaya, Thailand.

So, we de-pave, because today, when it rains heavily, where can the water stop? Where are the sponges in our cities? The other day, I was reading this phenomenal article about schoolyards in LA⁵, and I thought it was really very telling. It was a Washington Post article, and the article was packed with these figures and facts, including from this heat expert, Kelly Turner at UCLA. She mentioned there that schools in LA are basically shade deserts. The temperatures that have been measured on the schoolyards were 145 degrees Fahrenheit (63°C). So, we don't have to go far. We really need them [pocket forests]; they need to be part of city planning. Today, we just have to show what they can do. We do heat maps on them, and we see easily in forests that we have a 70 degree (39°C) inside a forest difference compared to outside of the forest. I mean, 70 degrees difference, with a simple pocket forest.

But it's as with everything, right? It's a new idea. It's a movement that needs time. But today, we can show for it. Seeing what's happening in cities and understanding this need today for de-paving and rewilding, bringing back that connection. The schoolyards in LA, from what I understood, were paved simply because [people thought] kids shouldn't get dirty. I mean, soil is, if not one of the essential parts of our life, that biodiversity we need for our well-being.

Mid-City’s Prescott School Forest in Los Angeles, USA.

INL: How does SUGi’s work differ from traditional urban tree-planting initiatives, especially in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem health?

Elise: If we unpack that: I think a city needs many different things; it could be street-lining, it could be parks, it could be green roofs, walls, whatnot. Pocket forests, in and of themselves, play a crucial role, as in, they have their own ecosystem services. The big difference compared to the other methods—and again, the pocket forests for me are part of a puzzle—is that we focus on density with native species, which attracts pollinators, birds, and the life that was originally there. Then also working with the soil, to bring back that healthy soil.

Today, a very concrete example is that we have a three-year-old pocket forest in London, and it's planted in a biodiversity desert⁶. So, imagine these “planetrees”⁷—nothing happens in between them. The planetrees are fantastic for shading, but when it comes to bird song, or a bird that wants to nest, or soil, it's still a biodiversity desert. The water runs off.

So, when we transform that spot… it's been interesting. We had a fungi specialist come into the forest a couple of weeks ago, and he said he found species that he had only seen in an old-growth forest. For us, this is really a sign that we can bring the magic of the old-growth forest back right where we live and work. That is one benefit.

Heritage Forest in London, UK.

Now, if you start to think of a city—and again, I'm referring to London because it's our best case—but we have 30 projects there now. If you lay them out on the map, some are small, some are big, some are 2.7 acres, which is about 30,000 trees. One, for example, at the Hayward Gallery⁸, is 100 m² (1,000 ft²). It’s planted on top of a garage, and it was a big structural feat to create that. But all these dots, it's like urban acupuncture. It's the idea of creating “pollinator pathways,” or “biodiversity corridors”. That connectivity throughout the city is really possible through the creation of that density [with pocket forests].

I think maybe that's one of my hopes with SUGi. The one in London took us 4 years to build because it was so grassroots, and one by one, we got there. What if we could take on a city as a whole—with the street-lining, and with the parks—we can integrate this corridor. The benefits of them are tremendous.

Manhattan Healing Forest in New York City, USA.

INL: Can you elaborate on the connectivity between pockets of biodiversity in a city? 

Elise: Sure. Absolutely. I just want to go back one step because I do want to elaborate on the connectivity between people and—what is that human aspect to the forest?

Something really interesting for us, and one of the founding values of SUGi, is the idea: How can we reconnect people to nature? How can we actually make them aware, or show people what it takes for a forest to regenerate—to build itself?

How can we actually make them aware, or show people what it takes for a forest to regenerate—to build itself?

And so now, with all these pocket forests that we've done around the world—we're going to hopefully end by 240 this year (we've planted a lot in schools, about 130 schools, and planted with over 80,000 children)—you see immediately what it means for them to stand in the soil, to have their hands in the soil and to hold these trees and plant them.

Oftentimes during the plantings, we also give them worms and we tell them: they aerate the soil, etc., and they don't want to hold it! First of all, they ask us, "Can we touch the dirt?" And we say, "This is not dirt, this is healthy soil." And second, they say, "Ew, ew, we don't wanna touch the worms," but give them literally 10 seconds and they'll be throwing them around and having the joy of their lives, and also naming their trees. There is that connection that is created.

Children learning at SUGi’s Thames View Forest in London, UK.

But then how do you keep that connection? And how do you build that over time? In schools, it's been really fun. Many of the teachers have adopted programs where they did scientific classes in the forest or do yearly reporting on a forest, which we also ask for. In a city, it's really interesting, we plant with the young and the old, and the planting is the fun part, but then there’s the maintaining of the forest and caring for it. It's like when you have a plant at home; you buy it, it looks so fun for a day or two, and then you've got to really care for it. You have to water it. It’s the same with these forests. Now, thank God they require very low maintenance.

What we've done in London (which is very new for us)—because we have in central London, pocket forests that are planted quite closely to one another (on a 5k walk you can actually visit 4-5 of our pocket forests)—we created a program called SUGi Walks, and every month we let people subscribe. We take a group and we walk them around the forest and really show them the different stages. Some are one year old, one is a year and a half, the other is three years, and another one is just planted, so you can really understand the complexity of nature.

And I think it's connectivity with people. A pocket forest in a city doesn’t thrive on its own; it requires care, especially in cities with a lot of trash, and we see that. But then, the other part is that these forests also create connectivity for wildlife. For example, a bee can travel up to two kilometers (1.24 miles). We're studying this right now, but we're pretty sure that with these pocket forests, we allow for that pollinator pathway—e.g., one bird or one bee can travel from one pocket forest to the other and really find what they need to survive.

Of course, we're at the beginning of a movement, I think we need many more [pocket forests]. The vision is to work with a city—to create real corridors, and then you have that connectivity immediately. Now it's being built ad hoc, which has also been beautiful because you see the transformation in and around the city. We also get a lot of feedback from people that live there or that pass by—it transforms spaces. For example, many people today sit next to our pocket forests and have lunch there, which was a dead space before. So, it's connectivity on many levels—the human level and also the species level. And I think that is the essence of SUGi, that triangle.

Elise Van Middelem planting in the pocket forest. Photo by Liz Seabrook.

INL: Do you integrate traditional ecological knowledge or local Indigenous wisdom in SUGi’s approach to species selection and ecosystem planning?

Elise: Yes, absolutely. And it happens to be that our Indigenous connection, and with the selection of species, is mostly focused in the US. There, we work with an advisor from the Yakama Nation⁹ just outside of Seattle—Mary Lee. She and her first maker, Ethan, really focus on that idea of understanding the ancient forest and what it meant for that tribal knowledge—how they gathered from the forest and how they hunted in the forest.

3.5 years of growth in the Healing Forest on Yakama Nation in Washington, USA.

Now, in our forest, we don't hunt, but we gather already. It started in the Yakama Nation, in a correctional facility, and that was our first project in the US. The idea was to create a healing forest—a forest that would touch upon the body, the mind, and spirit, and celebrate what was not there anymore. I remember visiting the site and meeting with Chief Alvarez¹⁰. It was dust—there was nothing. Today, a little over four years later, we have a lush, wild forest¹¹. Mary Lee, a gatherer by birth, told us that they are already harvesting 28 species out of the forest, and they haven’t seen that in 100 years. So, the idea that the magic that was in the forest, it is not lost—it can be brought back in the right way with the right selection of species.

…they are already harvesting 28 species out of the forest, and they haven’t seen that in 100 years.

The Miyawaki forest, the way we plant, has four layers: shrubs, sub-trees, trees, and canopy trees. With that, you can really mimic that ancient forest. We bring in medicinal herbs and plants, and then we select species that are important for that [area’s] tribal knowledge—from a gooseberry to an elderberry, to a dogwood or an aspen. It really depends. And it will, of course, vary. In Berkeley, for example, we worked together with the Ohlone tribe in New York, where we planted our first pocket forest in Manhattan on Roosevelt Island. We had a blessing and selection of species done with the Lenape people. They're beautiful stories that come with it. In the inauguration speech, they said something that really struck me. It was like, ‘we welcomed this new, old forest.’

American elder or “elderberry” (Sambucus canadensis), growing in the Healing Forest, on Yakama Nation in Washington, USA.

Manhattan was a forest. It was called Mannahatta¹². And it was the forest that they went to, to get the wood for the bows. So, to hear these stories and to have the whole community be part of the planting in New York…the energy was just palpable.

So, yes, every forest we plant in the US is with local tribal knowledge. Of course, that happens also in Chile, Brazil, South Africa, India—maybe less so spoken about, or less shown in that way. We do tell that story in the US profoundly.

INL: How scalable is SUGi’s pocket forest model for larger cities? Could this approach transform entire urban areas if widely adopted?

Elise: You touched upon a very important point here—if widely adopted. It really takes a movement. It takes many yeses, and it takes many stakeholders that come together, and it's an idea of private-public people partnerships. Actually, forget partnerships, because we can partner and then not collaborate. We need to collaborate. And this is also how we moved it forward today.

Manhattan Healing Forest in New York City, USA.

It was mostly people and private, but we need that public part with it. We touched upon it before—yes, there is this vision, absolutely, to be able to enter a city and make that movement. But let's take LA, for example, where there’s a huge opportunity. LA is concrete on concrete—it's a concrete jungle. What would it take to open it up? Besides the whole political agreement and city planning—that's already many stakeholders—it goes from water to fire to we've seen, but then also funding—because to de-pave is much more expensive than to plant. The article I referenced before touches upon that as well. The problem today is that we have so much concrete, but for someone to be able to say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna dedicate funding only to do the de-paving,’ that would be a win. So, you see, it needs many parties that come together and that are meeting at the right time, in the right place, to then create this movement. That would be the vision for 2028. Imagine that the Olympics are not only unveiled as the Olympics, but also as a green corridor that runs through the city—that I would love to do, if anyone's on board.

But also, to go back to that, we have done one pocket forest in LA, and it took us 18 months to negotiate 100 m² (1,000 ft²). That is not going to do it, right? Yes, we are a grassroots organization—but we can plant. Once there is that kind of coming together of visionary minds and we decide to do it, it's not hard to set up nurseries to train people to really create the movement. That would be exciting. This is where I see the possibility for the SUGi to scale.

INL: If you could inspire one fundamental change in the way cities approach urban biodiversity, what would it be?

Elise: Very simple. Today, we pay for gray infrastructure, which is sewage and other things. Green infrastructure should 100% be an essential part of it. There should be funding available for nature-based solutions. 

Pocket Forest at MLK Middle School in Berkley, California, USA.

INL: Is there anything you'd like to leave the audience with?

Elise: If I think back about building SUGi… I'm not an environmentalist, not a biologist; I am an absolute nature lover. I got really overwhelmed by the scale of the problem and I thought, can one person do something? Is there such a thing? The message I would like to share; one is this idea of just starting, but two has to do with when the problem feels so big, and overwhelm takes over. I had this conversation with Satish Kumar¹³ about it. You might have heard of him—he is an absolute peace pilgrim and lifelong activist, and he offered me this approach to this overwhelming environmental “problem” that we face.

He said, ‘You should not be overwhelmed by the world. Think of yourself as a radiator. One radiator warms one room and another radiator warms another room, and so you need to do your best to cover what you can do in the highest love and warmth and care. Do it at the highest quality, do it in your highest integrity with utmost love. And don't try to solve for everything. The many radiators will create the movement that transforms.’ This is something very essential to what we have done with SUGi—that it is a grassroots movement—and now it's really having that measurable impact. It's through collaborative action. That is at the heart of what we do at SUGi. And working directly on the ground at the community level, and in partnerships with stakeholders. That, for me, is a message of hope—and hopefully inspires warmth and care, because we need to do it together to drive that change.

Before and After | Healing Forest on Yakama Nation in Washington, USA.

You can learn more about SUGi here, and dive deeper into the transformative potential of Pocket Forests here. 

1. The Redwood forests near San Francisco feature accessible groves of coastal redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), a species renowned for their towering height and remarkable longevity. These ancient giants, which can live for over 2,000 years, anchor a dynamic ecosystem that fosters biodiversity, supports unique microclimates, and plays a vital role in regulating local hydrology.

2. Miyawaki Method is a forest restoration technique developed by Japanese botanist Dr. Akira Miyawaki. It involves planting densely packed native species to create self-sustaining, biodiverse forests in a short time.

3. SUGi, RiverLESS Forest, Beirut, Lebanon. See more here.

4. Newham Council’s Just Transition Plan: Creating a Fair and Inclusive Transition to a Green Economy, December 2023. Available at: Newham Just Transition Plan.

5. Why schools are ripping up playgrounds across the U.S., WP, September 14, 2024.

6. Biodiversity desert refers to an area that has low biological diversity, often resulting from human activity, environmental degradation, or a lack of ecological variety. With fewer species, they are more vulnerable to environmental changes and less resilient to ecological disruptions.

7. The London planetree (Platanus × acerifolia) is a hybrid of the American sycamore and the oriental plane. It is widely planted in urban environments due to its resilience in polluted air, drought, and its ability to provide shade. While it thrives in tough conditions and offers significant environmental benefits, such as cooling effects and energy savings, it does not support a diverse range of biodiversity. Unlike native species, it provides minimal habitat for birds, pollinators, and other wildlife.

8. SUGi, Natura Nostra Forest, London, UK. See more here.

9. The Yakama Nation is a Native American tribe based in central Washington, with ancestral lands along the Columbia River and the Cascade Mountains. The tribe has lived in the region for millennia, maintaining a deep connection to the land, including the Yakima River and Mount Adams / Pahto.

10. Chief Vernon Alvarez is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of Idaho and Chief of Yakama Nation Corrections.

11. SUGi, Healing Forest, Yakama Nation, USA. See more here.

12. Mannahatta, now known as Manhattan, was originally called by the Lenape people, the Indigenous inhabitants of the region. The name is often translated as "island of many hills" or "place of intoxication" (referring to the richness and abundance of the land), though interpretations vary. Once a forested and hilly landscape rich in biodiversity, it stands in stark contrast to the urban environment it has become today.

13. Satish Kumar is a peace activist and ecological campaigner who has dedicated his life to promoting a sustainable and spiritually connected world.