It took me over 16 years and thousands of hours working in the forest, but I gradually came to the conclusion that certain restoration practices were not working. In some areas, the initial clearing of invasive plants had triggered a vicious circle of weeding that required more hours, year after year, than I was willing to spend on repeated reweeding. I decided that if I were starting over, I would begin by figuring out how much time I wanted to realistically commit to weeding in the long run, and given that limited amount of time, how I could restore a backyard forest. My sustainable strategy for backyard forest restoration is presented here in a free PDF e-book (or in larger font for smaller screens here).