One Hundred Trees A Year - OHTAY!

We’re asking you and everyone we know and meet to commit - not to me, not to anyone else, but to commit to yourself - to planting One Hundred Trees A Year for the rest of your Life, and to spread the word and extend the invitation to everyone you know and meet. If that sounds like a lot right now, don't fret. The invitation is to just make room on your shelf for it now, and to look at it in good time. If it seems like too much right now, please consider how you can help the movement - Maybe you could begin germinating a few tree seeds in containers in your backyard and see what comes of it. Maybe you could offer some younger, more energetic person in your neighborhood the use of your backyard as a tree nursery. Maybe you could purchase plant pots or potting soil for someone who is ready to plant trees. You could collect tree seeds on your hikes or when you eat fruit to give to someone who’s ready to plant them. Maybe you could build a tree nursery now (without plastic) and get to planting 1,000s of tree seeds right away :)

You can definitely spread the word right now. There are people everywhere who are ready for a concrete way to help. Please help spread the movement.

If you commit to begin moving down this path, you’ll arrive at One Hundred Trees A Year in no time! 

Stabilizing global climate - Trees cool the surface of Earth through physical processes called the Biotic Pump phenomenon. They also draw more water vapor over onto land from the oceans. The combined effect is a cooler planet with lighter, and more frequent rains. Life wins!

Improving global ecology - Trees support communities of plants, fungi, and other beings. These communities (we call them forests) reduce air and sea carbon levels, bring more frequent rains, and cool the planet. This allows all beings in sea and on land to thrive.

Improving local ecology - Trees create soil. Trees feed and create habitat for animals, fungi, bacteria, lichens, mosses, even other plants! Native trees especially benefit native ecology. A biodiversity of trees supports a biodiversity of all Life forms. Trees filter light so many more species of plants can grow, increasing biodiversity. They keep the soil and the organic matter they build on top of it cool, moist, and shaded, so Life can prosper!

Benefitting agriculture - Trees create the forest soil ecology that annual crops love. When we include trees in our gardens and farms they move ecological succession forward to stages that our annual crops evolved to thrive in. Trees create systems which yield more food and yield more nutrient-dense (and more delicious) foods with more natural medicines in them. This improves human health as a part of improving ecosystem health.

Supporting local water economy - Trees transpire - they release water vapor out of their leaves, cooling Earth and increasing the humidity around them. Lots of trees filling lots of canopy levels transpire a lot, cooling Earth and increasing humidity a lot. This reduces the evaporation from the ground. At night, this humidity condenses on plants and falls back into the ground, keeping water in that system. More leaves, more condensation, more water in the ground, and less water leaving the ground through evaporation. This is called the Small Water Cycle. Instead of competing for water, we see trees bringing and keeping water in the local water economy. This is one reason why Miyawaki forests don’t need irrigation after the first three years, even in deserts. 

Cooling cities - Trees cool Earth in at least three ways: they reflect some light into space before it hits the soil, they convert some light into chemical energy through photosynthesis, and they pump some heat up and out of the atmosphere through the Biotic Pump. This is why it’s usually 10-20 degrees cooler under trees in the summer. This is important in cities where all the cement and asphalt has the opposite effect. Trees can keep places like Phoenix livable if we plant them everywhere! 

Quieting cities - Trees absorb sound and quiet the noise of the bustling cities around them. 

Reducing pollution - Trees absorb pollutants, cleaning the air around us while adding fresh oxygen. They also feed saprophytic fungi in the soil who do powerful chemistry. Saprophytes are the beings who can decompose persistent pesticides and herbicides, protecting our families in the process. A forest is a perpetually self-renewing mycoremediation site. Let that sink in.

Dampening EMF signals - Trees generate their own magnetic fields and dampen electromagnetic signals. In a world of electromagnetic life forms constantly bombarded from all directions by human-made EMF signals, it can’t hurt to reduce that interference on our biological systems. 

Healing nature deficit disorder - Trees create the environmental conditions that we evolved to be immersed in, and thereby allow fuller epigenetic expressions of human (and many other) beings. They bring more bird songs, more natural terpenes, more leaf-rustling and gentle light. They offer peaceful places for meditation and reflection. Trees reduce anxiety in humans and their mere presence has been shown to lower measurable symptoms of multiple forms of mental illness. 

Focus on native species. Humans eat non-native food every day, so you don’t have to be fanatical about natives, but you benefit native ecosystems more the more native species you plant. If we create a forest with non-native species in it, that forest will create an environment where native species will begin to self propagate. Things will work themselves out over the next few hundred years because we will have triggered the return of the forest. If you want to plant a food/medicine forest to create nutrient-dense foods for many species, please do. You can include many native species in that food and medicine forest. The important thing is that you begin planting trees. 

Think biodiversity. The more biodiverse an ecosystem is in plant species, the more resilient it is, and the more biodiversity of animals, fungi, bacteria, etc. are possible in it. Planting a biodiversity of (mostly native) trees means happier beings in a healthier ecosystem. 

Plant densely. Plant trees closely together. This allows systems to regenerate quickly, rocketing through ecological succession back to mature forest. Things will work themselves out from there. Planting (a biodiversity of mostly native) trees close to each other increases their resilience by allowing their mycorrhizal networks to all connect early on, so the entire interconnected, nutrient and information-sharing root-fungi system of the whole patch of trees is the collective root system of each young tree. 

Fill in the canopy levels. Planting a dense biodiversity of (mostly native) trees, shrubs, and woody vines of many sizes and shapes allows them to fill in all canopy strata, making the forest more resilient. The more space is filled with living leaves, the more the system will power the small water cycle, increase the rate of soil production, cool the surrounding area, feed and provide habitat for animals, sequester carbon out of oceans and atmosphere, and stabilize global climate. Are you hearing me that this piece is important?

Build tree nurseries. Build without plastic, and build living nurseries. We will need thousands more tree nurseries on the planet for the great global reforestation and the great global transition (back) to agroforestry which are about to occur. Please get a jump start on these projects by building (or planting!) tree nurseries now. We need to stop buying plastics, so don’t use plastic for your nursery. Be creative and have fun with it. Bamboo woven into wire fencing will filter light. Remember nurseries just mimic the filtered light of a forest. Two rows of trees are a nursery! A large tree is a nursery :)

Start somewhere. It’s ok to make mistakes. Some seedlings won’t make it. Some trees may die after transplanting. It’s ok. This is how we learn. If 100 is too many, maybe 2 will be a good place to start. Just putting a few tree seeds in the ground may be a good way to get your feet wet.  

Don’t be limited by the number 100. It is just a tangible target to give people something to grasp onto. Once you get 100 in the ground, there’s no reason to stop planting, and there’s every reason to continue!

Please get involved and please spread the word! The movement needs you. The situation we’re in with global climate destabilization and global desertification is serious. We need all hands on deck. We still have some agency in this situation. Planting trees and spreading the movements of global reforestation and the return to agroforestry are some of the most powerful agency that you do have to help in this most important moment in human history. We sincerely thank you for your interest.   <3