> "planting 15,000 trees, and mowing regularly."
I guess the idea behind the mowing is that you want to prevent the weeds from choking out the saplings? Otherwise "mowing" and "forest" seem kind of mutually exclusive to me.
I guess the idea behind the mowing is that you want to prevent the weeds from choking out the saplings? Otherwise "mowing" and "forest" seem kind of mutually exclusive to me.
Over the next couple of decades, the trees will start getting a foothold, starting with the faster growing trees, which crowd out all the nasty shrubs but still produce a dense group of small little trees just barely spaced out enough for an adult to get through, then eventually stabilizing on oaks and the other very tall, hard trees, culminating in what one traditionally considers a "forest", something you can walk through because it's mostly very large, mature trees spaced dozens of feet apart. This will take a century or two to progress to the final stable state, depending on how tenacious the smaller trees are.
But if you want to jump straight to that and avoid the middle bit, it takes some maintenance. I assume the promise is a combination of a promise to do that maintenance, and probably to maintain some trails through it.
I could have sworn I learned a term in school for this sort of "biome progression" to what I thought was the "terminal biome" (the final, stable biome that results) but Google does not agree. Anyone who remembers their biology better than I, I'd be much obliged for the term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_forest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-growth_forest
I think the term you were looking for was a "climax community."
I see Google says the idea has fallen out of favor, though even when I was taught it I was taught that the oak trees will still fall, creating clearings, which then march back through the same progression, so even then it was only notionally "climax".
In the years I've lived here I have been amazed at how rapidly trees grow. The bottom of our pasture was mostly tall grass and a few tiny saplings. They are now approaching 10 feet tall and need to be bush hogged because they are interfering with the growth of grass. At the same time, the undergrowth in the area we have left untouched (the rest is horse pasture) is amazing. There are wild apple trees, enough wild grapes that I made a 5-gallon batch of wine a few years ago, raspberry bushes and stuff I can't even name.
tl;dr - I'm seeing that in my backyard right now.