Volunteers are planting the start of what they hope will be Chestnut Hill’s first mini-forest.

Several volunteers with the Friends of Casey’s Ice Pond Park, a Fairmount Park-sponsored organization, on Saturday planted $400 worth of seeds, plants, and other materials at the triangle of public land at the intersection of Lincoln Drive, West Springfield Avenue, and Navajo Street. The planting marks a major step in the volunteer-led effort to renovate that part of Woodward Pines, a section of Fairmount Park.

“It went very well. It’s a pretty significant jump forward,” said Robert Fleming, a landscape architect in Chestnut Hill and active member of Friends of Casey’s Ice Pond Park.

Volunteers installed black chokeberry and gray dogwood, among others, to create an understory layer of the mini-forest, and they have tentative plans to install more plants in the spring, Fleming said. Developed by late Japanese botanist Dr. Akira Miyawaki, the mini-forest method involves growing dense and multiple layers of native plants at a faster speed than conventional forests. These pocket-sized forests have spread to urban environments all over the world since the 1970s.

Christopher Sohnly, owner of Spruce Hollow landscape design company, has been leading and designing the renovations at the park in conjunction with the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Department. That intersection is an ideal location for the project because it’s exposed to lots of sunlight and receives support from surrounding residents, he said.

Friends of Casey’s Ice Pond Park formed this year under the leadership of Sohnly, Fleming, and B.J. Hauswald. The park is named after Dr. James Casey, who owned the Chestnut Hill Ice Co. in the early 20th century before the spread of commercial refrigeration, Sohnly said. That intersection was once occupied by a pond that would allow Casey to harvest ice in the winter.

One of the park’s notable features is its two American chestnut trees, which were planted by volunteers in 2017. They were the first of their kind to be planted in Chestnut Hill that year, Sohnly said.

Both chestnuts are healthy and one of them even produced flowers and husks this year, he said. This means it’s resistant to the chestnut blight that wiped out much of the species’ population on the eastern seaboard in the early 1900s.

“Its very exciting. It’s great to return this native tree back to [Chestnut Hill’s] forest,” he said.

Sohnly, B.J. Hauswald, and the rest of Chestnut Hill Tree Tenders began restoring the land in 2017, when it had recently lost pine trees and was heavily degraded. Chestnut Hill Tree Tenders planted swamp white oak and black cherry trees in November 2017 as part of its fall tree planting.

In the fall of 2024, volunteers and Pennsylvania-based tree service John B. Ward Co. removed debris and invasive vines from the Navajo Street side of the property. Volunteers then conducted a major planting in May, removing invasive vines and installing 45 plants to form the upperstory, or top layer, of the forest. These included willow oak, pin oak, black chokeberry, and magnolia.

The group is still fundraising to pay for the mini-forest materials and a backflow preventer, which was installed in September and allows the group to use city water to maintain the plantings. They need to raise between $600 and $1,000, he said on Friday. The group started a GoFundMe for the project over the summer.

Fleming expressed his gratitude for Sohnly and other experts who’ve contributed to the project.

“The park is part of a vision that a lot of us have to improve green spaces in Philadelphia,” he said. “To have him come forward and take on a project like that is just terrific and fits our mission.”

Sohnly said he’s concerned about the future of the world’s bird and native plant population in the face of climate change and declining biodiversity. He’s hoping this park will play a small part in supporting pollinators and birds.

“You have to have native plants if you’re gonna have insects. And with insects comes birds,” he said.

All the plants come from Pinelands Nursery and Supply in New Jersey and were donated to Penn State Extension’s Master Watershed Steward program, Sohnly said.