Community tree planting support for Scotland

For the last 100 years International Tree Foundation has supported communities to achieve their tree planting ambitions. In the UK, we offer funding and expert consultation on for a range of different project types and scales. It’s an extraordinary brief, and it’s led to the creation of a diverse range of planting schemes.

Community-led tree planting

‘Community-led’ can mean so many different things, and we try to keep a very open mind about the types of projects that we support. Not everyone has access to a lot of space and we don’t want to preclude people from getting involved with tree planting just because they only have a small patch to work with. This has meant that we’ve supported projects that range from tiny community orchards of 10 trees, all the way up to community-led landscape-scale restoration of hundreds of thousands of trees.

Planting trees across Scotland

ITF are particularly keen to expand its work in Scotland. With its generous access laws, high rainfall, and low population density, community tree planting in Scotland can often take place on a larger scale than other areas of the UK. In the past few years, we have supported many projects, from urban planting in central Glasgow to community buyouts on the Isle of Skye and we would love to continue further with this.

Within its package of support, ITF only has a few requirements. One is that the trees be ‘owned’ by the community that planted them. We want local people to be able to get involved in the planting of the trees and to then be able to stay engaged with that project as it matures. Watching the trees changes across the seasons and years is an inspiring sight and tree planting projects only get better as they mature. We want as many people to experience this feeling of optimism and hope that you can get from seeing a small woodland slowly grow up into a forest.

Local ownership

ITF’s model is to have as light a touch as possible in the creation of a project, stepping in only we think there’s a real need to do so or if asked. We don’t want anyone thinking that the trees belong to ITF – instead, we want local people to feel ownership and engagement with these trees.

The benefits of this are many-fold. Firstly, it empowers local people in having a say over how their local green spaces are managed. Secondly, it introduces people to the topic of trees and tree planting, many of whom won’t have engaged with it before. And thirdly, it means there’s a fully-engaged volunteer force ready to look after the trees in their first few years.

This last point is an important one. We’re increasingly hearing about tree planting schemes failing, where millions of trees have been left to die on the sides of hillsides and motorways because no one is factoring in any watering into their maintenance. What we’ve seen in the past few years is, even areas where you would expect a steady fall of rain throughout the year, droughts can occur and result in the mass die-off of young trees.

In this light, the community model is robust, adaptable, cheap, and engages many people in the topic of trees. It is our hope that the simple of act of planting trees will inspire both children and adults into appreciating the trees in their local area, to thinking where more could be planted, and finally to reimagine a world where trees are given the importance they deserve.

People all over the world are starting to see their local areas in new lights, and starting to demand more trees. Across the UK, various ‘green groups’ have formed, not to mention the swathe of community buy-outs in Scotland. The community movement has truly begun and ITF are here to help support and accelerate its growth.