How a Pocket Forest Took Root in Attleboro
Attleboro Pocket Forest series, Post 3
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
— attributed to Margaret Mead
The people of Attleboro, Massachusetts, took an unused baseball diamond behind Attleboro High School and helped turn it into a pocket forest. A pocket forest is a dense planting of native trees and shrubs designed to absorb stormwater, cool the area, and support biodiversity. Akira Miyawaki, a plant ecologist from Yokohama National University, originated the concept. This project also became a community asset and a symbol of what people can do when they work together.
This series has been exploring the Attleboro Pocket Forest and what it can teach changemakers. The first posts focused on why local action matters and what a pocket forest is. This post asks a different question: How does a project like this actually come together?
A local project may begin with one person seeing a possibility, but it succeeds when other people join in, bring resources, share leadership, and take responsibility for the work. It is tempting to imagine change as the work of one exceptional person. The Attleboro Pocket Forest shows something more realistic and more useful: someone may spark the idea, but the project only grows when others help carry it.
A local problem became visible
After September storms dropped about 10 inches of rain on Attleboro in 2023, stormwater was no longer an abstract climate issue. It was a local problem people had seen in their own streets, yards, and neighborhoods. Nick Wyllie, Attleboro’s Environmental Planner/Conservation Agent, saw one possible response: a pocket forest behind the high school that could help the city absorb more stormwater while also serving as an educational demonstration.
Rob Moir, founder and executive director of the Ocean River Institute, was involved early in planning with Wyllie and later helped with fundraising, coordination with the high school, and the broader environmental case for the project.
That educational purpose mattered. Attleboro High School students were not just watching adults do conservation work. Teachers connected the project to the science curriculum, students were given a continuing role in monitoring the young forest, and the school’s media team, the Blue Reporters, created a short video about the project. The video helped promote a community event at the Attleboro Area Industrial Museum, where Moir spoke about the pocket forest. In that way, the site became a living classroom: a place where students could see conservation, community action, and public education happening together.
Early supporters mattered
Wyllie couldn’t do the project alone. The idea needed allies. Mike Davis, chair of the Attleboro Sustainability Commission, was one local civic leader who helped move the project forward. The commission’s work on sustainability and resiliency gave the idea a civic home. City officials, the Department of Public Works, donors, educators, students, residents, and volunteers also became part of the effort.
The project also drew on outside academic support. John Rogan, a professor of geography at Clark University, brought academic expertise and Clark students into the work. One Clark undergraduate, Jamie Young, contributed research and analysis connected with the project and also took part in the planting.
From idea to planting day
The project moved forward in stages. After the 2023 flooding, Wyllie saw a pocket forest as one possible local response and educational demonstration. From there, partners helped identify the site, secure resources, prepare the land, gather volunteers, and organize the planting. After planting day, the work shifted to stewardship: making sure the young forest was monitored, watered, and cared for as it became established.
Projects need enthusiasm, but they also need money, approvals, tools, materials, schedules, and people. A good idea has to become a plan. A plan has to become work that people can actually do.
Over two days, more than 150 volunteers planted about 550 native trees and shrubs from 50 species in a 2,000-square-foot plot. Moir wrote that “building a forest is as much about relationships as it is about trees.”
Small, local, practical, and related
This project was small, local, practical, and related. The trees, fungi, soil, water, and wildlife were reconnected ecologically. But members of the community were also connected more deeply by this project. Students worked beside college volunteers, residents, city staff, and local leaders. Local donors made the project possible. Community members took responsibility for maintaining the forest after the first exciting weekend was over. Moir would later reflect that what struck him wasn’t only the method, but the people who made it work.
Moir also makes a larger point about scale. We often look for climate solutions in large systems: new technologies, major infrastructure projects, and sweeping policy changes. Those matter. But local projects work on a scale people can see and touch. A pocket forest will not solve climate change by itself. But it can help absorb stormwater, hold more of that water in the soil, cool a neighborhood, support biodiversity, and reconnect people to the land. When efforts like this are repeated across communities, their impact begins to add up.
What changemakers can learn
The Attleboro Pocket Forest offers a useful lesson for anyone who wants to make a difference. You don’t have to do everything yourself. In fact, it is better if you don’t. Sometimes leadership means seeing a possibility and inviting others to help. Sometimes it means being the first person to say, “I’ll help.” And sometimes it means staying with a project after the launch, when the work of care and maintenance begins.
Local change often begins when a few people see a possibility, invite others in, and keep working after the first exciting day is over. That is how good ideas grow: not all at once, and not through one person alone, but through shared effort, practical support, and continuing care.
Reflect and notice
- What is one need in your community that could become a project?
- Who would need to say yes for your idea to work?
- Who might be one of the first people willing to help?
- What practical support would your project need?
- What would have to happen after launch day to keep the project alive?
Sources and further reading
- Rob Moir, “In Attleboro, a forest grows — and so does hope,” WBUR Cognoscenti
- Attleboro High School Blue Reporters video on the pocket forest
- Ocean River Institute: Miyawaki Forest in Attleboro
- Design Thinking: A Guide to Innovation
- Image note: The image in this post was generated by the author. It is intended to represent community planning for a pocket forest, not to document a specific moment in Attleboro.