About Little Forests
Let’s make magic. Let’s re-enchant our cities. Let’s plant Little Forests as songs, poems, love letters to the land. Experience the wonder & delight of a deepening relationship with the magnificent living, breathing organism known as Earth.
Our vision
Transform Kingston into a nature positive, equitable City in a Forest by 2030.
Our mission
Little Forests are collaborations between plants, soil, organisms, climate, geology, land and people. Together with our collaborators, Little Forests Kingston is working to bring 3-30-300 tree equity to Kingston: every child can see 3 trees from their window, live in a neighbourhood with at least 30% quality canopy & live within 300 metres of a quality greenspace. We believe Little Forests in every neighbourhood – linked by ecological corridors — are powerful catalysts for bringing climate, social and multispecies justice into our city. Little Forests emerge from and are planted with diverse communities, creating inclusive spaces that offer refuge & the possibility for a transformative relationship with the natural world. Little Forests are seeds that fuel the transformation of the surrounding neighbourhood.
Our theory of change, like the forests on which we model our thinking, is based on living systems thinking. While our focus is Kingston, through our collaborations with our partners we believe our model could become a "wise practice" seeding citizen-led urban afforestation across Canada, spreading change through a mycelial network of organizations, with each node or place replicating and adapting to evolve their own response. And, like a keystone species, we see Little Forests as keystone interventions seeding transformation in each neighbourhood and within each organization.
Our values
- Centre the land: Entering into conversation with the Land as teacher, as alive.
- Centre equity: Value all lives (human and non-human), strive to create pathways to full participation in Little Forest projects and seek to address 3-30-300 inequity.
- Honour all my relations: Little Forests are pathways into deepening our relationship with trees, plants, soil, organisms and the land.
- Practice cycles of care: Align cycles of care, ceremony and celebration with the cycles of Little Forests.
- Decolonize the city: Help the land remember by planting Little Forests. They are teachers, challenging us to question colonial biases, assumptions and ways of being.
- Practice acorn thinking: Think at the timescale of the Little Forests we plant and our obligations to future generations, both human and non-human. They will become elders for our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
- Promote wellbeing: Plant Little Forests for the wellbeing of the land, the people and the relationships between the people and the land. Listen with compassion and empathy for the needs and gifts of the trees, the land and the people.
- Design a little, build a little: Codesign (with humans and non-humans) flourishing spaces, continually learning as we go.