A Canberra-born social enterprise is helping local communities build microforests across the ACT and beyond
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When the summer days are behind us, most of us tend to forget the heat until the next burst rolls around. Not Edwina Robinson.
The experience of stepping out of her air-conditioned car onto the dark asphalt and 37-degree heat in the Australian National Botanic Gardens car park a few years ago is seared into her memory.
As Edwina moved into the shade near the Garden’s Visitor Centre, the beating heat dropped slightly, to 34C. But when she walked into the rainforest gully, her brain sped up as her body cooled down.
“I descended into the rainforest gully, brushing past lush ferns, palms and lilies. At the bottom it was 26 degrees Celsius,” Edwina says.
The experience started thinking about how the creators of the gully had stepped up to what many thought was a difficult task:
“Some sceptics said it couldn’t be done, and that you couldn’t build a rainforest in a dry creek bed amongst dry sclerophyll forest. Undeterred, they went ahead,” she says.
Watson MF community planting in mud.
Later that same year, a TEDx talk by Shubendu Sharma–who makes tiny forests across the world–merged with the memory of the rainforest gully, and gave her the idea for a social enterprise that is connecting communities across the ACT and beyond. She decided to help communities build their own microforests.
“I was sold. I knew this is what I wanted to do,” Edwina says.
With three friends (Elizabeth Adcock, Purdie Bowden and Mitch Porteous) as her co-founders, Robinson started a social enterprise (for purpose business) called The Climate Factory. Over the last four years, it has supported volunteer groups to build three demonstration community micro forests in Canberra (in Downer, Watson and Holt, respectively). A new name, coming soon (The Microforest Collective) will even more clearly stamp their mark on the space.
“Our micro forests are led by a volunteer group of community leaders supported by the social enterprise. Then, we pair those community leaders with landscape professionals to ensure the groundworks ensure the plants thrive into the future,” says Edwina.
They’ve also started working across the border: Moruya has gained a micro forest based on a Dry Rainforest, a locally endangered ecological community of the SE Forests; there’s a Queanbeyan build in progress at the moment; and The Climate Factory has also inspired the formation of a number of micro forests through online workshops at Monash City Council Local Government Area in Melbourne and Lake Macquarie in NSW.
Holt Microforest volunteers planting.
Rather than rely solely on grants, which Edwina says can encourage competition rather than collaboration, they encourage community microforest makers to run a crowdfunding campaign to raise 50% of their project funds.
“Throughout the process the community leadership team learns new skills, builds new connections and at project completion ends up with a gorgeous microforest in their neighbourhood,” she says.
While communities are keen on the end product, the desire to take part in the project’s goes deeper, says Robinson.
“A lot of people feel really anxious about climate change. When you are able to physically do something about your local environment it can help reduce that anxiety,” she says.
As Edwina and her co-founders launched and refined their business, they worked closely with The Mill House Ventures – a Canberra-based organisation that has supported dozens of social enterprises across the region.
“Although I have a lot of technical knowledge I didn’t know how to create a business or how to create and sell products. The Mill House provided some great resources to get us started and to help build our confidence in creating a business for good,” she says.
Although she’s still supporting her social enterprise through other paid work, Edwina credits The Mill House Ventures with setting her on the road to success.
“It gave me the confidence to make one microforest. Now I can’t seem to stop. It’s infectious.”
The last four years have taught her that communities can make a difference.
“Don’t rely on authorities to take action – this is something that’s incredibly achievable by a community, park by park,” she says.
Even better, most people get more than a cooler suburb out of the experience.
“If you get involved in one of these projects you will make long-lasting friendships,” says Edwina.
With a few more potential projects up their sleeves, Edwina and her co-founders have their eye on the big picture of the budding microforest movement:
“We want to build a microforest in every urban hotspot in Australia. But you have to start somewhere, so why not build one in each of Canberra’s 133 suburbs?”
Feature image: Watson Microforest Edwina at planting day. Photo by Jarra Joseph McGrath.
