Miyawaki Report - Jun 15, 2021
Dear Miyawaki Cheerleaders,
A few moons ago, Andrea Z pointed me in the direction of Art's Nursery as a great source of native seedlings. Silly me, I confused it with Art Knapp's Nursery both of which are in Surrey. Anyways, I finally realized my error and got a lot of good pricing data to the point where I can now announce that for the smallest 100% Miyawaki Forest 10 by 10 meters, and purchasing mostly from Nat's and Art's Nurseries, requires a plant budget of $4500 for the minimum 30 species required. We can recover some of that money by selling the many excess seedlings from Nat's and by growing our own. On top of that , add $1000 for excavation ($250 rental, the rest for transport and qualified operator for a full day). There should be a signage, fencing, irrigation etc budget (let's guess $500) as well... and so a total tentative budget of $6000 assuming the stakeholders will provide the labour and supervision and later maintenance work for free. Let's call that a baseline to work with for now.
Recently, Sabine alerted me to the existence of nativars: these are "artificial" cultivars of wild native plants. It turns out some of Art's Nursery's offerings (not available at Nat's Nursery) are only available as nativars. That might be a problem as research has shown some nativars do not exhibit the same biodiversity magnet potential as the original truly wild native plant they are derived from. You can tell when a Nursery sells a nativar as opposed to a true native plant because they add a fancy variety name after the species name. This is just one of many intellectual adventures I keep making in this Miyawaki research... Learning stuff I did not know that I didnt know :-)
NATIVAR SUMMARY
Proceed cautiously with using nativars if you are seeking to maximize your native habitat.
Feel confident that wild-type native plants provide valuable ecological function in your garden.
Avoid woody nativars that change the leaf color of the plant.
Consider trying open-pollinated flowering nativars that are similar in color and shape to their native wild-type, only IF you are unable to locate the wild-type.
Do be cautious and ask your local nursery, “Is this a native wild-type or a nativar?”
Expect some nativars to not support as diverse of an insect population–both insect herbivores and pollinators.
Support nurseries that carry wild, open-pollinated natives.
Reach out to wildlife gardeners around you to try to find sources of native wild-type seeds or plants.
In my last report, I had planned to attend a SUGi international webinar for Miyawaki project leaders. It was held at 3 A.M. our timezone and I slept in :-/
But yesterday, a recording was made available:
... it is nice to see all that youthful energy and interesting anecdotes.
I had also planned to master the art of propagation of our native species. LOL. That is still my goal but will require something like 10,000 hours and I think I put in about 20 so far. LOL. But also, on top of that, I have been studying the latest discoveries in Soil Science, some of which is tangentially relevant to Miyawaki Forests
So I have acquired (but not yet read) textbooks often cited as "the best":
and also this one which seems quite relevant:
and so far the best summary (5 pages with lots of pictures) I have found is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wPgyRYXy12taql5pvgFq7WqBzJd-vgQl/view ... I am quite familiar with the author, William Horvath, a permaculturalist I sometimes interact with.
I believe it is within our grasp to grow 1000 native saplings in our backyards and section of Sweet Digz Farm, thus seriously reducing the baseline budget... and increasing the likelihood of creating a matrix of pocket forests in Richmond linked up by native plant hedges
one of my next goals is to create a Richmond-friendly Biodiversity Potential Index to allow us to measure the before and after effect of a Miyawaki Planting over time
THANK YOU ALL who keep feeding me tips and suggestions and encouragement.
Cheers
Bruno