You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here, and today I have a treat for you.

We are going to a microforest.

If you've never heard of one, they are small, they are lush, and unlike natural forests,

microforests are designed entirely by humans for urban environments.

And producer Rachel Carlson went to visit one in Los Angeles recently. Hey Rachel. I did. Hey, it was amazing. I had the most fun day ever. I hung out with two scientists who've dedicated themselves to planting these tiny forests to cool down cities and make them more resilient to climate change.

Okay, where did you go to see a microforest?

Ascot Hills Park, which is a park in northeast Los Angeles.

It's surrounded by freeways and interstates.

It's not too far from the heart of downtown L.A.

So it's not really an area that I typically associate with lots of green space, but...

You pull off the freeway and drive this way and you see a green stamp of 10,000 square feet.

And that's exactly what it looked like a green stamp. That's Damien Willett and associate

professor of biology at Loyola Marymount University. He's one of the scientists I met with

who's worked on planting and maintaining

this microforest for the last two years. Okay, but what makes a microforest a forest? In a forest,

the canopies of the trees touch one another. Well, you plant one tree, that's just a tree. But once you

start having the canopy connect, that starts to be what we imagine as a forest where we have this kind

of blockage of the sunlight,

but also a forest has layers. Canopies of trees with layers of plants beneath them. So in that way,

a microforest does simulate a natural forest. Okay. But what makes a microforest micro?

It's smaller?

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