How to grow a forest in your backyard

This is a man-made forest.

It can spread over acres
and acres of area,

or it could fit in a small space --

as small as your house garden.

Each of these forests are just two years.

I have a forest in the backyard
of my own house.

It attracts a lot of biodiversity.

(Bird call)

I wake up to this every morning,

like a Disney princess.

(Laughter)

I am an entrepreneur

who facilitates the making
of these forests professionally.

We have helped factories,

farms,

schools,

homes,

resorts,

apartment buildings,

public parks

and even a zoo,

to have one of these forests.

A forest is not an isolated piece of land
where animals live together.

A forest can be an integral part
of our urban existence.

A forest for me,

is a place so dense with trees
that you just can't walk into it.

It doesn't matter
how big or small they are.

Most of the world
we live in today was forest.

This was before human intervention.

Then we built up our cities
on those forests,

like Sao Paulo,

forgetting that we
belong to nature as well,

as much as 8.4 million
other species on the planet.

Our habitat stopped being
our natural habitat.

But not anymore for some of us.

Few others and I today
make these forests professionally.

Anywhere and everywhere.

I'm an industrial engineer.

I specialize in making cars.

In my previous job at Toyota,

I learned how to convert
natural resources into products.

To give you an example,

we could drip the sap
out of a rubber tree,

convert it into [our/road] rubber

and make a tire out of it.

The product.

But these products can never
become a natural resource again.

These separate the elements from nature

and convert them
into an irreversible state.

That's industrial production.

Nature, on the other hand,
works in a totally opposite way.

Natural system produces
by bringing elements together,

atom by atom.

All the natural products become
a natural resource again.

This is something which I learned

when I made a forest
in the backyard of my own house.

And this was the first time

I worked with the nature
rather than against it.

Since then,

we have made 75 such forests
in 25 cities across the world.

Every time we work at a new place,

we find that every single element
needed to make a forest

is available right around us.

All we have to do is to bring
these elements together

and let the nature take over.

To make a forest we start with soil.

We touch, feel and even taste it

to identify what properties it lacks.

If the soil is made up of small
particles it becomes compact.

So compact that water cannot seep in.

We mix some local biomass
available around,

which can help soil become more porous.

Water can now seep in.

If the soil doesn't have
capacity to hold the water,

we will mix some more biomass --

some water absorbent material
like peat or [bed grass],

so soil can hold this water
and it stays moist.

To grow,

plants need water, sunlight and nutrition.

What if the soil doesn't have
any nutrition in it?

We don't just add nutrition
directly into the soil.

That would be the industrial way,

it goes against the nature.

We instead add microorganisms to the soil.

They produce the nutrients
in the soil naturally.

The feed and the biomass
we have mixed in the soil,

so all they have to do
is eat and multiply.

And as their number grows,

soil starts breathing again.

It becomes alive.

We survey the native
tree species of the place.

How do we decide what's native or not?

Well, whatever existed before
human intervention is native.

That's the simple rule.

We survey national parks to find
the last remains of a natural forest.

We survey the sacred [groves],

or sacred forests of our own old temples.

And if we don't find anything at all,

we go to museums

to see the seeds or wood of trees
existing there a long time ago.

We research old paintings,
poems and literature from the place,

to identify the tree
species belonging there.

Once we know our trees,

we divide them in four different layers.

Shrub layer,

Sub-tree layer,

Tree layer

and Canopy layer.

We fix the ratios of each layer

and then we decide the percentage
of each tree specie in the mix.

If we are making a fruit forest,

we increase the percentage
of fruit-bearing trees.

It could be flowering forest,

a forest that attracts
a lot of birds or bees,

or it could simply be a native,
wild Evergreen forest.

We collect the seeds

and germinate saplings out of them.

We make sure that trees
belonging to the same layer

are not planted next to each other,

or they will fight for the same
vertical space when they grow tall.

We plant the saplings close to each other.

On the surface we spread
a thick layer of mulch.

So when it's hot outside
the soil stays moist,

and when it's cold,

frost formation happens only on the mulch.

So soil can still breathe
when it's freezing outside.

The soil is very soft;

so soft that roots
can penetrate into it easily,

rapidly.

Initially, the forest doesn't
seem like it's growing,

but it's growing under the surface.

In the first three months,

roots reach up to one meter.

These roots form a mesh,

tightly holding the soil.

Microbes and fungi live throughout
this network of roots.

So if some nutrition is not available
in the vicinity of a tree,

these microbes are going to get
the nutrition to the tree.

Then when it rains,

magically,

mushrooms appear overnight.

And this means the soil below
has a healthy fungal network.

Once these roots are established,

forest starts growing on the surface.

As the forest grows,

we keep watering it for the next
two to three years.

We water the forest.

We want to keep all the water
and soil nutrition only for our trees,

So we remove the weeds
growing on the ground.

As this forest grows,

it blocks the sunlight.

Eventually,

the forest becomes so dense

that sunlight can't reach
the ground anymore.

Weeds cannot grow now
because they need sunlight as well.

At this stage,

every single drop of water
that goes into the forest

doesn't evaporate back
into the atmosphere.

This dense forest condenses the moist air

and contains it's moisture.

We gradually reduce and eventually
stop watering the forest.

And even without watering,

the forest floor stays moist
and sometimes even dark.

Now, when a single leaf
falls on this forest floor,

it immediately starts decaying.

This decayed biomass forms humus,

which is food for the forest.

As the forest grows,

more leaves fall on the surface --

means more humus is produced,

means more food so the forest
can grow still, bigger.

And this forest keeps
growing exponentially.

Once established,

these forests are going to regenerate
themselves again and again,

probably forever.

In a natural forest like this,

no management is the best management.

It's a tiny jungle party.

(Laughter)

This forest grows as a collective.

If the same trees --

same species --

would have been planted independently,

it wouldn't grow so fast.

And this is how we create
a 100-year-old forest

in just 10 years.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)