Our Story
It started with a motivated person, an unloved park and an idea.
The summer of 2019–20, Australia burned for months. Canberra choked on smoke for weeks. When it cleared, Edwina Robinson had an idea. She'd learned about a Japanese method for growing dense native forests fast - and wondered whether it could work here, with Australian species, in an ordinary suburban park.
She put it to her community. Would they fund it? The answer was a resounding yes with more than $23,000 raised before a single plant went in the ground.
In 2020, 1,800 native plants went into a Canberra dustbowl. Within seven months some had grown three metres tall. Within a year, a couple turned up with a picnic table and a bottle of wine to sit in the forest they'd helped plant.
That was the pilot. And it worked.
"We could do this in my neighbourhood too"
Mitch Porteous did the same thing in Queanbeyan.
But co-leading that project gave Mitch a clear view of what was broken. Every new project hit the same walls. Approval processes that took months. Crowdfunding that stalled. Leaders who ran out of steam before the trees were in the ground.
The forests worked. The system around them didn't.
What was needed wasn't more enthusiasm - it was infrastructure. Shared systems so the next leader didn't have to figure everything out from scratch.
So they built something better.
In 2024, Edwina, Mitch, Purdie and Liz founded the Microforest Collective to build it. They recruited four founding directors - Irene Zhen, Jason Perelson, Jo Abbott and Leisa Quinn - senior leaders who brought governance, credibility and networks the project couldn't have had otherwise.
Then the public showed up.
A crowdfunding campaign raised $20,000 - proof that the idea had support beyond the people who'd already planted a forest. That funding built the infrastructure that means any leader, anywhere in the country, can get a microforest in the ground.
Wedgetail, a conservation fund, backed the first national schools program. Mitch was accepted into Startmate's Launchclub. And in December 2025, the Microforest Collective became a registered charity with DGR status - meaning every dollar donated to a microforest is now tax deductible.
The Collective now supports projects across the ACT, NSW and Victoria - and is actively looking for leaders and partners to bring microforests to QLD, S.A and the N.T.
The forests are growing. So is the network behind them.
