Micro-gardens re-think the concept of provenance trials for the future needs of forestry in Europe. Micro-gardnens are small, 100 m2 each, but hundreds of them are distributed across Europe. Micro-gardnens are established from seeds using direct seeding directly into the forest soil, thus inform about natural regeneration. Micro-gardens are participatory and inclusive, each of them is managed by a local forester who is thereby actively contributing to the establishment of future forest management strategies.

Multi-lingual website and protocols: Website, inscription questionnaire, and observation protocols are already available in 13 European languages thanks to the project’s dedicated team of local coordinators.

Novel infrastructure for micro-gardens: Seeds are protected with purpose-designed and produced steel fences “seed protectors” to avoid seed predation and to protect the forests from contamination with foreign seeds.

Data collection with a smartphone: Powered by ODK Collect, data collection is standardized and effortless, and allow for submitting the data to centralized server.