Creating a Pocket Forest in Katowice | March 25, 2025 | Green Pulse of Silesia
Creating a Pocket Forest in Katowice | March 25, 2025 | Green Pulse of Silesia
Can a forest be pocket-sized? It may not fit in your jacket – but it can definitely grow in the heart of a city.
On March 25, at Graniczna Street in Katowice, we planted as many as 700 native trees, creating a pocket forest in the city center. The event took place as part of Green Pulse of Silesia – a long-term educational and environmental initiative carried out by the One More Tree Foundation and Stellantis Philanthropy, part of the global automotive group Stellantis.
Shovels in action
Students from the Private School Complex in Katowice worked side by side with Stellantis volunteers. Shovels went into motion, holes appeared one after another, and trees that have grown in Silesia for centuries were planted into the ground – silver birch, red oak, Norway maple, small-leaved lime, hornbeam, European larch, and black pine.
700 trees in just a few hours – that was enough for a forest to begin to exist.
A small forest, big impact
A pocket forest is not just planting trees – it is restoring an ecosystem.
The method developed by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki involves planting trees very densely, in carefully selected combinations of species that naturally support each other.
This competition for light and space allows trees to grow up to 10 times faster than in traditional plantings.
But rapid growth is only one of the effects. A forest created using this method builds a fully functional ecosystem from the very beginning – with biodiversity, rich soil, and a network of relationships between plants, insects, and microorganisms.
In urban areas, this is especially important: such a forest absorbs CO₂, lowers the surrounding temperature, retains rainwater, and becomes an island of biodiversity among concrete and asphalt.
A typical urban planting – a few trees in neat rows – cannot achieve the same effect. In a few years, the place where we stood with shovels will become a thriving forest.
A lesson in the field
This was a lesson in ecology that cannot be taught in a classroom.
Planting a tree by hand, discussing why native species matter, and understanding how a forest ecosystem works – these are experiences that stay with you.
This is exactly what Green Pulse of Silesia is about – education through action, in direct contact with nature, in a place that will become a living proof of what we achieved together.
We would like to thank all participants for their fantastic work, the City of Katowice for preparing the site, and our strategic partner – Stellantis Philanthropy – for their invaluable support.
