Our Scottish Adventure
One damp day in May, Jorden Summers, Co-Founder of The Greener Earth Project (TGEP), and Thom Wade, the Trustee in charge of volunteering, went to Scotland to visit one lot of the 10,000 that we have planted with 1% for the Planet.
What did we do?
This is the second year that the TGEP has worked with 1% for the Planet to plant 10,000 trees. The trees were planted on degraded farmland near Kirkcudbright in southern Scotland. The aim is to restore this land and to increase wildlife in the area by including biodiversity pockets, which included digging ponds where the water table is high. There have already been crested newt sightings!
Other areas have been left to rewild naturally, including areas where there is peat. Peatlands are often known as ‘carbon sinks’, as they can absorb and store large amounts of carbon dioxide, and the ones in Scotland do a marvellous job at storing 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon. This is equivalent to 140 years’ of the country’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions.
1% for the Planet will work with local farmers to introduce longhorn cattle to graze the rewilded areas during the year. Grazing cattle act like natural lawnmowers and help to maintain open spaces.1 It is important to maintain these spaces to protect certain bits of land, such as peatland, from losing an ecosystem.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), for example, actively removes shrubs and brambles from the Minsmere Nature Reserve in Suffolk. If the RSPB did nothing, these shrubs and brambles would overtake everything in the reed beds, and it would destroy the habitat of bitterns and marsh harriers.1
Why plant in Scotland?
Once upon a time, Scotland was once covered with Scots pines; however, these were felled for many reasons, including to make charcoal and ship masts, and for use in iron foundries. Another main reason was during the Highland Clearances, when poor people were driven from their homes so that landowners could use the land to graze sheep and deer. Any sprouting pine seedlings would have been ripped from the ground and eaten, leaving a landscape barren of trees.2
As the weather becomes more extreme, it is important to provide shade and shelter for animals. Trees and woodland can provide this shelter while increasing biodiversity. However, native species are in decline, and climate change and agricultural intensification are the main factors.3
Trees can also act as windbreaks and reduce soil erosion. Planted near peatland, trees could reduce the amount of topsoil picked up and carried off by the wind, thereby protecting the soil and ecosystem from further harm.
What did we plant?
The site is 90.97 hectares, and we have planted on 55.18 hectares. We planted approximately 31% of the site with a mix of pines, including Scots pines; 36% with mixed broadleaves, such as silver birch and wild cherry; and 33% with native broadleaves like hawthorn and holly.
Read more:
- Barnes S. ‘Why your garden is not an oakwood’, How to Be a Bad Botanist (2024) London: Simon & Schuster, pp.143-50.
- Barnes S. ‘Naked and unashamed’, How to Be a Bad Botanist (2024) London: Simon & Schuster, pp.209-19.
- Barnes S. ‘Don’t break the bank’, How to Be a Bad Botanist (2024) London: Simon & Schuster, pp.273-6.