Ethan Brys​​on/Natural Urban Forests & Stephanie Lindquist, An Invitation (Community Garden & Miyawaki Forest)
Franconia Sculpture Park, 29836 St. Croix Trail, Shafer, MN 55074

This project evolves a pre-existing Miyawaki forest planted at Franconia Sculpture Park in 2016. The project was a collaboration between Ethan Bryson and artist Lu Xu. In bringing together large-scale line drawings in space with the planting of a native forest, the project was a meditation on how we can reconcile our urban and technological future with environmental concerns and an appreciation of our heritage. This dialogue between art and nature continues with the planting of a second indigenous forest in collaboration with Minnesota-based artist Stephanie Linquist. Lindquist and Bryson’s collaboration will be a further boost to biodiversity in the locality, and demonstrate how ecosystem restoration can work in harmony with large-scale public sculpture, as well as bringing communities together.

AN INVITATION

Take time to walk in circles. Life’s biology moves on vastly different time scales. Let’s get to know our elders, the plants. An Invitation welcomes a small group of people to gather, commune with Boxelder Maple, Northern Red Oak, White Pine, Yellow Birch, Red Pine, Red Maple, Red Cedar, Large Toothed Aspen, Silver Maple, Tamarac, Paper Birch, Sugar Maple, Balsam Fir, White Cedar, Common Juniper, Low Shadbush, Chokecherry, Wild Plum, Black Chokeberry, Mountain Ash, Elderberry, Red Osier Dogwood, Highbush Cranberry, Ninebark, Prairie Rose, Sweetgale, Meadowsweet, Bush Honeysuckle, Meadow Rose, Virgin’s Bower, and all grow together. Groups of all ages are invited to learn from and care for natives here. May this space nurture our elders–the plants–and in turn ourselves.

The crescent shapes of the June 4th plantings are inspired by African fractals and the cycles of the moon. Nestled within these plantings are places for people to gather, cook, smoke, eat and drink together: a firepit with 3 large stones to rest a pot and 4 large granite tables placed in a loose circle atop recycled granite–the remains of our urban construction.

Native trees and shrubs are spaced 1 to 2 feet away from each other. This method of planting–championed by Akira Miyawaki–restores an ultra dense biodiverse forest that grows 10 times faster and requires no maintenance after the first three years. An important aspect of caring for these plants is respecting their space–especially in those early years. To maintain this boundary is an ephemeral fence made of Willow–a plant of diverse species used for millennia across the Northern Hemisphere by Indigenous peoples for shelter, medicine, tools, and more recently ecological remediation. The fence’s arches imitate the crescent shaped plantings and the circular paths along their perimeter as well as embraced within them.

Stephanie Lindquist received her BA from Columbia University and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Minnesota. Her work has been exhibited at Google, Smack Mellon, the New York Public Library, The New Museum, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and North Dakota State University. Through ancient plants and the cultures they cultivate, she thinks about diaspora, race, gender, sexuality, technology, economy—and increasingly how food traditions and land stewardship are shared by elders over time.

Natural Urban Forests (NUF) was established by Ethan Bryson with the focus to address the urgent need to restore native forest ecosystems. Working with Shubhendu Sharma of Afforest, Bryson learned the Miyawaki Method of forest planting. As the US partner of Afforest and SUGi, NUF creates forests utilizing this innovative method that enables forests to grow 10x faster at 3x the density of standard afforestation methods.