A beginners’ guide to planting trees – and fighting the climate crisis | Trees and forests

LIn November, amid the turbulent weeks of Cop26 I found myself on a sunny hillside in the Brecon Beacons, watching saplings be planted. Families – grandparents, parents, grandchildren – followed a rugged tractor track snowy with autumnal willowherb, each carrying a foot-high tree destined for a high hillside above the steep valley. With world leaders in Glasgow deciding our planet’s future, this felt like a pretty good place to be: witnessing an optimistic, physical gesture of climate action amid so much talk. “Hope is taking action,” Greta Thunberg declared in her lauded “blah, blah, blah” Speech at Milan’s Youth4Climate conference last September.

With their natural capacity to sequester carbon – to draw it from the atmosphere and lock it up as wood – trees are a simple, easy-to-understand way of tackling the climate emergency. Cop26 saw the most attention-grabbing pledge at Cop26. End to deforestation by 2030.

The UK is not a forest leader, but we are one the least-forested European countries. According to the Woodland TrustThe UK’s tree cover is much lower than the EU average at 13% of total land cover, compared to 37%. The Climate Change Committee has advised that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, tree cover must rise to 19% of the UK – about 1.5bn trees moreThe Woodland Trust says so. This means that 22 trees are needed for each person in the UK.

Tree-planting initiatives are on the rise, whether they be politically motivated or charity campaigns, or private companies looking to offset carbon emissions. AstraZeneca partnered with Forestry England in order to plant 30,000 hectares of wood each year by the government. Plant a million treesThe National Trust is a charity that works across the UK to restore native woodland in Southern Scotland. Have 20m new treesTrust land by 2030 Coldplay has committed to planting a tree For every ticket soldDating app for the 2022 World Tour The Sauce will plant a tree with every match; and energy suppliers are offering “greener” tariffs that support woodland regeneration. There’s even a tree planting scheme to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Trees, trees, trees.

Like most people, I want to see more trees planted. And I’d like to know that the initiatives I support are future-proofed and environmentally sound – the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew has warned that poorly planned tree planting could actually increase CO2 emissions and reduce biodiversity. It was published recently 10 golden rules to reforestationIt is important that schemes consider sustainability and site suitability.

But where should I begin? Which trees are the most beautiful? Which trees are best? Who will care for them?

Those trees I saw being planted in the Brecon Beacons were giant sequoias – the enormous conifer native to California’s Sierra Nevada range. Tree enterprise organized their planting. One Tree, One Life. At its site near Abergavenny (one of four), paying patrons had come to offset a lifetime’s carbon footprint by planting one of the world’s largest trees.

Some argue that non-native species may be detrimental to native biodiversity. Over thousands of generations, a network of interconnected fauna, flora, and fungi has developed alongside our native trees. Replace them with foreign trees and these relationships may be damaged.

One Life One Tree will plant native trees such as oak and rowan alongside the sequoias. “We’re only planting on previously felled monoculture timber plantation land,” says founder Henry Emson. “If we weren’t to take this project on, this land would just be bought by a timber business and restocked with non-native conifers – we are creating a biodiversity increase, not a decrease.”

These trees are capable of capturing carbon the best, he claims. Giant sequoias, unlike other conifers like Sitka spruce and Douglas fir, which have a plateau in their growth after a certain age; giant sequoias grow and accumulate wood well beyond the point of maturity. “So their value for carbon capture keeps going for a millennium.”

Another common concern with planting non-natives is the potential for “invasiveness”; plants outcompeting UK flora, or harbouring potentially destructive pathogens. To this, Emson says his sequoias are grown in the UK from seed, “so there’s no import of any disease or bugs. Giant sequoias can’t propagate in the UK – they need wildfires – so there’s no threat of them breaking out into the countryside.”

He started the project by planting one sequoia per child to offset their carbon footprint. Emson calculates that, with life expectancy in the UK at about 80 years, and per capita carbon emissions at 6.5 tonnes per annum, a giant sequoia growing to 500 cubic meters can offset a person’s lifetime carbon footprint. “Per hectare, native woodland will capture 400-600 tonnes of CO2 over 100 years. Sequoias spaced as we have them here will capture 6,000 tonnes.” Patrons pay £395 a tree, which contributes to the land cost and maintenance.

Talking to patrons planting their lifelong sequoias was a heartening experience: parents Richard and Eva were planting a tree for their young son Leon (“it’s for his future”). “I haven’t met a single patron who has been like, ‘I’m doing this so that I can carry on as I was’,” Emson says. “They are conscientious, doing it out of love for the planet. People who are off-setters don’t bother coming out to Wales to plant a tree.”

“Climate adaptability” is another of Kew’s 10 golden rules. In its tree species database, Forest Research (the UK’s principal organisation for tree studies) lists the giant sequoia as “a species that could be grown more widely throughout Britain with climate warming”. So, colossal conifers native to North America could prove advantageous in their suitability for a warmer climate (there are 150-year-old examples growing well in Welshpool, mid Wales), but Kew’s Dr Kate Hardwick urges caution: “A lot of foresters assume we’re going to need non-native species to deal with climate change. But we just don’t know yet,” she told me. “There’s a huge amount of genetic diversity in our native species and there may well be enough to adapt to the climate change we’re going to experience.”

Farmland is another route to carbon capture and reforestation. Bryn Arw is a pilot site located just north of the Black Mountains’ sequoia grove. Stump up for Trees(Suft), which is a charity that encourages landowners and landowners alike to plant more trees. Winding lanes lead up to the 64-hectare hillside parcel, where nurtured saplings can face the harsh winds and breathtaking views of the Beacons.

Its co-founders were Keith Powell, a seventh generation Black Mountains farmer, as well as Robert Penn, writer of The Man Who Made Everything Out of Trees. “We think carbon sequestration is really important,” says Powell, “but it comes quite low on the list of the benefits of planting trees.” Improving soil and water quality, and providing for wildlife, are among Suft’s priorities, along with natural flood management. Suft volunteers, contractors and others planted 130,000 native trees in this area last winter. It was the first significant tree plantation on common land of Wales.

Suft has other goals. The charity is trying to persuade farmers to plant trees on their least productive land. Carbon capture could play a role in this case, as once new tree plantings are approved for Woodland Carbon Units (as required by the government-backed Woodland Carbon Code), carbon sequestration can then be sold in the form carbon credits. “We’re trying to get farmers to see carbon as a crop on marginal or non-food-producing land,” says Powell. “It could provide a sustainable income for farms – and that way it’ll be acceptable all over the country”. Penn tells me that selling carbon credits on a new two-hectare native woodland project could easily realise £10,000 for the landowner. Indeed, “Make it pay”, is the 10th of Kew’s golden rules, recognising that income streams will ensure the sustainability of reforestation projects.

Cities can play a role in reforestation, too – in the form of urban “forests”, parks, workspace courtyards, roadside verges and traffic islands. Sugi, a rewilding organization, plants native saplings densely so that they can mature quickly into forests and thin naturally as the trees compete to get more light.

A corner of a London primary school’s concrete playground is being transformed into a pocket forest with native species, including hazel and spindle. “The concept is that the forest becomes self-sustaining very quickly,” says Sugi’s lead forest-maker, James Godfrey-Faussett. “From an environmental point of view, a forest ecosystem is probably the most impactful thing you can do in an urban area; it can affect biodiversity, air quality, communities and the local environment.”

Employing the “Miyawaki Method” – a reforestation approach using densely planted, locally native species saplings that will naturally thin and mature – Godfrey-Faussett has worked with local businesses and schools across UK cities, establishing plantings as compact as a few square meters. At one central London primary school, he told me, a corner of concrete playground is being replaced with a pocket forest, bringing a dose of nature into the children’s playtime. “The concept is that the forest becomes self-sustaining very quickly.”

I was struck by the common theme of keeping things community-based among the various initiatives I spoke to. I found the Suffolk Tree Warden Network while searching for tree projects in my Suffolk home. It is a voluntary branch within the Suffolk Tree Warden Network. Tree CouncilThis group has been growing trees for charity from locally collected seed. “We’re growing them in containers and back gardens,” says volunteer Fe Morris. “A couple of our members have set up tree nurseries in schools.” These trees are given away.“There’s been a really good uptake because everyone is rightly terrified about the climate crisis.”

But it’s not all about planting new trees. The Woodland Trust, aligning with Kew’s rule “Protect existing forests first”, is seeking to preserve vulnerable ancient woodland. “At one point, woodland would have been the dominant landscape feature of the UK,” says the trust’s Bridget Fox. “But only 3%, on average, of the UK is now ancient woodland.” Places like Wychwood in Oxfordshire or Epping Forest on the outskirts of London are brimming with veteran oaks, lichens, fungi and flowers. “Soil that has only ever been wooded is so rich, supporting not only trees but other plants, bugs, birds, mammals and so on,” says Fox.

This well-established ecosystem is what makes ancient woodland so efficient at carbon capture. According to the Woodland Trust, woodlands in the UK contain 213m tonnes of carbon. Older and more established woodlands hold 36%, even though they only make up 25% of all woodland. “Yet only 7% of our woodlands – ancient and modern – are in good ecological condition,” adds Fox. “We’re calling for ancient woodlands to have buffer zones around them, which could be newly planted woodland, or just land left for natural regeneration, so it’s protected from noise, pollution and buildings hard up against it, which can compact the soil.”

The Woodland Trust provides information on many ways people can get involved. It runs several preservation initiatives, from recording the health of veteran trees in their area via the trust’s Ancient Tree InventoryTo help Map showing urban tree coverThis can be used to lobby councils for more trees and better protection of existing trees.

It’s clear from the conversations I’ve had that carbon capture reforestation efforts – large or small – must be multifaceted, tackling in particular the growing biodiversity crisis, which scientists say is just as catastrophic as climate change. The Natural History Museum Recently, warned that the UK has only half of its entire biodiversity left, with an average of just 53% of its native wildlife – plants, animals and fungi – intact. Their analysis cautions: “This is significantly below the 90% average set as the ‘safe limit’ to maintain the ecological processes such as pollination and nutrient cycling that are vital to our survival.” At Cop26, a Kew group launched the Global Biodiversity Standard, which aims to assure people that the tree-planting projects they support do not prioritise quantity over provision for nature. This logo will soon be recognized as a certification symbol.

The carbon challenge will continue to affect the world my son, aged two, is growing up in. But the comforting thought that trees and forests might be valued more is a comforting thought.

Five things you should do

Plant a tree in the garden
The RHS websiteThis is a useful resource to help you choose the right tree variety for your location.

Protect existing trees
Pay attention to the health of nearby streets and parks trees. Being a tree-warden.

Go local
Your local council can help you reforest your area by lobbying for more trees. There are many campaigning resources available at friendsoftheearth.uk.

Record wildlife
Help the Woodland TrustBy recording and submitting observations about selected flora or fauna, you can help build a better picture on the UK’s biodiversity.

Question sustainability
You should ensure that the tree planting schemes you support are focused on sustainability and not greenwashing. Also, ask about their species selections as well as their future safeguarding plan.