Whole Wild World
- Number
- Seat of Hope 01
- Species
- Delphinus delphis
- Common Dolphin
- Location
- Europa Point foreshore · Gibraltar
- Sponsor
- M H Bland
- In aid of
- GibSams
- Message
- “Healing Minds with Nature”
Registered Charity No. 329 · Gibraltar
A forest, one square metre at a time.
Every tile behind this text is one square metre of ground in Gibraltar. The green ones are planted. The grey ones are waiting. Twenty pounds turns one grey tile green — and puts a name on it.
Rewilding is usually something that happens somewhere else — a valley you will never visit, a species you will never see. We think that is why it stalls.
So we start where people already are. A dense native forest in a school playground. A mosaic bench on the Europa Point foreshore. A QR code on a carob tree. Then we connect each of those small, visible things to the wild land it belongs to — cork oak in the Algarve, forest in Uganda.
Small enough to touch. Connected to something large.
The Method
Four layers, planted at once.
A Miyawaki forest is not a row of saplings. It is four strata planted together, densely, in soil rebuilt from the microbes up — the way a forest would assemble itself if it had a hundred years and we did not.¹
- Four strata · one planting
- Viable from 100 m²
Method: the botanist Akira Miyawaki, from phytosociology — how plant communities assemble. Mediterranean adaptation: FCULresta, University of Lisbon.
¹ Advocates report Miyawaki plantings growing roughly ten times faster and thirty times denser than conventional plantings. These figures originate with practitioners rather than peer review, and are contested. See our sources.
CanopyEmergent crowns. The last layer to arrive.
TreeThe structural body of the forest.
Sub-treeShade-tolerant. Fills the middle.
ShrubGoes in first. Holds the soil.
Soil, rebuilt from the microbes up
Public Art · Gibraltar
Four benches. Four species. Four reasons to sit down.
Mosaicked by Ireana Schwock, granted by the Ministry for the Environment, and made with GibSams. Each bench carries one native species and one line about coming back from something.
- Number
- Seat of Hope 02
- Species
- Orcinus orca
- Orca
- Location
- Europa Point · Gibraltar
- Sponsor
- Gib Oil
- In aid of
- Cancer Relief Gibraltar
- Message
- “Nature nurtures recovery”
- Number
- Seat of Hope 03
- Species
- Caretta caretta
- Loggerhead Turtle
- Sponsor
- Lottoland
- In aid of
- GibSams
- Message
- “Like the turtle, may you find strength in patience and hope in endurance.”
- Number
- Seat of Hope 04
- Species
- Sphyrna lewini
- Scalloped Hammerhead
- Status
- Critically Endangered · IUCN
- Sponsor
- Cert. Insurance Group Ltd
- In aid of
- The Nautilus Project
- Message
- “Where hammerheads thrive, oceans recover.”
- Number
- Seat of Hope 05
- Unclaimed
- Choose the species. Write the message. Name the charity it supports.
Urban to Wild
A forest in a playground is a door to somewhere else.
Every mini forest we plant in a city is linked to a wild site it supports. Plant here. Connect there.
PLANT
CONNECT
GROW
SHARE
Gibraltar
Gibraltar Horticultural Society
Mini forests, Seats of Hope and Living Trails — the urban half of the model, planted where people already are.
Urban Rewilding →
Portugal
Herdade Alagães
The foundation site. Sorraia horses, Iberian lynx, cork oak — the wild land the city forests are connected to.
Herdade Alagães →
Uganda
Treescape Planet Organisation
Our east-African partner. The first photograph is in — the full story is still on its way from the field.
treescapeplanet.org ↗Working with
Put your name on a square metre.
It gets planted. It gets photographed. It appears on the mosaic with whatever name you choose.
0
100 m² · A micro-canopy
Target