Native species selection: the botanical decision a Miyawaki forest stands or fails on.

Because the method reproduces the forest that the site would have carried naturally. Native species are already matched to the local soil, rainfall and pest regime, so they establish without long-term irrigation or chemical support, and they support local birds and insects. Exotic ornamentals may look established sooner but do not build the same self-sustaining system.

By surveying the natural vegetation that survives around the site (remnant forest patches, sacred groves, hill slopes, riverbanks) and reading the soil and rainfall regime. Those species are then sorted into four layers and proportioned so no single species dominates. Local nursery availability then decides what is practically plantable in the coming season.

The method calls for a wide mixture rather than a fixed number, typically several dozen species across the four layers on a reasonably sized plot. Diversity is the point: it spreads risk, fills the canopy at different heights and gives the plot the structure of a forest rather than an orchard.

Shrub, sub-tree, tree and canopy. Each layer occupies a different height band, so the plot closes its canopy from top to bottom, suppresses weeds and creates the shaded, humid microclimate that drives fast establishment. A list without layer proportions is not a Miyawaki species list.

Native fruit-bearing and flowering species that occur in the local vegetation are legitimate and often desirable, because they draw birds and pollinators. What is avoided is grafted horticultural varieties and exotic ornamentals, which need continued care and do not contribute to a self-sustaining forest structure.

Conventional planting places widely spaced saplings, often of a few fast-growing species, with permanent maintenance. Miyawaki plants a dense mixture of native species at close spacing so that they compete upward and close canopy quickly, after which the plot needs no routine care. The species logic behind the two is entirely different.

That is a common constraint and it has to be solved before the season, not during planting. Options are advance indent with a regional nursery, seed collection and raising for the following cycle, or substituting a botanically comparable native species from the same layer. Substituting an exotic because it is on the shelf defeats the method.