Dedicated trees in the Caledonian Forest in Scotland.

"Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests un-defaced by the hand of man. No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body."

Charles Darwin.

"...evolution did not intend trees to grow singly. Far more than
ourselves they are social creatures, and no more natural as
isolated specimens than man is as a marooned sailor or hermit."

John Fowles.

"What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another."

Mahatma Ghandi

“He who plants a tree plants hope.”

Lucy Larcom.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree

Martin Luther (1483 ~ 1546).

Trees are the best monuments that a man can erect to his own memory. They speak his praises without flattery, and they are blessings to children yet unborn.

Lord Orrery

1749

We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorous and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent and intimate hours.

Marcel Proust

Pleasures and regrets. 1896

“Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good for food, and for building, and for instruments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can be far wrong in either who loves trees enough, and everyone is assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has brought them in his way."

John Ruskin

Our Partners - Trees for Life

We at TreeTwist Ltd may be dedicated to getting trees in the ground, but we leave the planting of your trees to the experts. The money you give us towards trees we pass on to our partner - Trees for Life. Trees for Life is a multi award winning forest restoration and conservation charity dedicated to the regeneration and restoration of the Caledonian forest in the Highlands of Scotland. Their inspiring goals and vision extend beyond simply combating carbon damage to the atmosphere and embraces the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) 'Plant for the Planet' - Billion Trees Campaign recently launched by the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Wangari Maathais.

. Caledonian Forest

The charity will more than double this year’s planting total with a commitment to plant 100,000 native trees in the Scottish Highlands in 2007. Launching this pledge at the start of National Tree Week, Trees for Life is one of the first UK organisations to step up to the challenge.

The charity’s executive director and founder, Alan Watson Featherstone, said “We’re delighted to join forces with UNEP, and people all over the world, in making this positive and practical commitment to plant 100,000 trees next year. These trees will make a significant contribution to the return of the Caledonian Forest in the Highlands and are also a statement of care and concern for the future of the planet.”

Standing (left to right): Neil Armstrong & Iona, Jill Hodge, Adam Powell, Elaine Dempsey, Dan Puplett, Mandeigh Wells.Picture courtesy of Trees for Life

The UNEP campaign’s goal is for a billion trees to be planted by individuals and organisations around the world in 2007, to encourage people everywhere in addressing the issue of climate change. The Billion Tree Campaign encourages planting in degraded natural forest and wilderness areas. With Scotland having lost 99% of the original Caledonian Forest, and the Highlands offering substantial scope for restoring wild land, Trees for Life is ideally placed to help achieve UNEP’s goal and is now seeking extra volunteers to help with planting the trees in spring and autumn 2007.

Scotland is a prime candidate for ecological restoration work, as it is one of the countries which has suffered most from environmental degradation in the past. The Highlands in particular have been described as a 'wet desert' as a result of the centuries of exploitation which have reduced them to their present impoverished and barren condition. Formerly covering 1.5 million hectares the Caledonian Forest has been reduced to just 1% of its former extent.

Working in partnership with Forestry Commission Scotland and the RSPB, Trees for Life has been actively restoring the Caledonian Forest since 1989. Running over 30 volunteer conservation Work Weeks a year Trees for Life have already planted more than half a million native trees as part of a far reaching project to return a 900 square mile target are in the North West Highlands to wild forest. The long term goal of Trees for Life is to restore the Caledonian Forest to an area of 600 square miles in the north-central Highlands, and to reintroduce the missing species of wildlife, such as the beaver, wild boar, brown bear, moose, lynx and wolf which formerly lived in the forest.

The vision of Trees for Life is to restore a wild forest, which is there for its own sake, as a home for wildlife and to fulfil the ecological functions necessary for the wellbeing of the land itself. Many other countries are now repeating the same ecological mistakes, Trees for Life believe that the onus is on Scotland to provide an example of reversing the damage which has been done. Thus, at Trees for Life, they envision their work to restore the Caledonian Forest as not only helping to bring the land back to a state of health and balance, but also having global relevance, as a model for similar projects in other countries.

The Trees for Life Target Area for forest restoration

Trees for Life have been implementing their vision and strategy through practical work on the ground since 1989, and some of their most significant accomplishments to date include:

Over 150,000 naturally regenerating Scots pine seedlings and other native trees have been protected from overgrazing by fences which they've funded.

Morning pine, Caledonian Forest, picture courtesy of Trees for Life

More than half a million Scots pines and native broadleaved trees have been planted by staff and volunteers.

They have funded the fencing of 458 hectares (1,132 acres) of land in Glen Affric for forest regeneration and expansion.

Carbon Offsetting projects in Scotland

They’ve carried out forest restoration work at numerous other sites in their target area, including Glen Moriston, Achnashellach, Grudie Oakwood in Strathbran and the Corrimony Nature Reserve in Glen Urquhart.

Riperian Zone, picture courtesy of Trees for Life

They have initiated special projects for the regeneration of rare trees in the forest, such as aspen, and for specific threatened parts of the forest ecosystem, including the montane shrub community and riparian or riverside woodland.

In 1991, in recognition of their work, they were declared the UK Conservation Project of the Year in an annual competition run by the Conservation Foundation.

In 2000, after 5 years of monitoring and assessment, Trees for Life received the prestigious Millennium Marque Award which was given to projects which 'demonstrate environmental excellence for the 21st century'.

In 2001, their founder and Executive Director, Alan Watson Featherstone, received the celebrated Schumacher Award for 'his inspirational and practical work on conserving and restoring degraded ecosystems'.

They propagate all the native trees in Caledonian Forest in their own nursery at Plodda Lodge, concentrating particularly on the scarcer species, such as hazel, holly, juniper etc, which are difficult to obtain from other sources.

The four most commonly planted species are Scots Pine, Rowan, Aspen and Birch.

Hazel growing close to Glen Affric, picture courtesy of Trees for Life

Juniper, picture courtesy of Trees for Life

Over a thousand volunteers, from teenagers to seventy year-olds, have taken part in their forest restoration work. Coming from both the local area, and as far away as Canada, Argentina and Australia, the volunteers receive a powerful experience of working together in a group with like-minded people to do something practical and positive for the planet. See Volunteer Work Weeks in the Scottish Highlands.

Over a period of several years, they have carried out the most extensive surveys in Scotland for dwarf birch, a key component of the montane shrub vegetation community. This is part of their programme to facilitate the regeneration and recovery of this community, which has been almost entirely eliminated in Scotland by overgrazing and burning.

They run the largest programme of aspen propagation in Scotland, growing this rare species from root cuttings for planting out in the Highlands. They’ve also carried out an extensive survey of their target area for aspen trees, having mapped out 352 sites where it occurs.

They acted as a catalyst for the purchase in 1993 by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) of the West Affric Estate, which encompasses the entire headwaters of the Affric River. In partnership with NTS they are working to facilitate forest restoration on West Affric, through a series of exclosures for natural regeneration, some planting of native trees and a reduction of deer numbers.

In 1995 they produced a special educational pack for schools, entitled 'The Disappearing Forest', featuring worksheets on the importance of trees, and a story to colour about a wolf and a bear, who lose their homes as the forest disappears. These were distributed to every primary school in the Grampian and Highland regions of Scotland. An updated and revised edition of this pack, e Fantastic Forest', and now including a beaver in the story, was reprinted in 2000.

In 1996 they purchased Plodda Lodge, near Glen Affric, and this field base houses some of their volunteer work week groups and their own native tree nursery.

Further afield, their vision and practical work have played an important role in inspiring several other projects to become established - the Carrifran project, which aims to restore native forest to an entire valley in the Borders region of Scotland; Moor Trees, which aims to restore native forest to Dartmoor in the southwest of England; and the Yendegaia project in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, where a substantial area of land which is the same distance from the equator as the Caledonian Forest has been purchased for the restoration of its degraded forests and protection of its wilderness qualities.

To return to the home page click here , or to go to our FAQ page, click here

Call 0870 142 0388 to order

A tree uses what comes its way to nurture itself. By sinking its roots deeply into the earth, by accepting the rain that flows towards it, by reaching out to the sun, the tree perfects its character and becomes great. ... Absorb, absorb, absorb. That is the secret of the tree.

Deng Ming-Dao

Everyday Tao. 1996

Thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life).

Deuteronomy

20:19

“Speak to the Earth, and it shall teach thee.”

Jo 12.8

“The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

Abraham Lincoln

"Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed, chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. During a man's life only saplings can be grown, in place of old trees — tens of centuries old — that have been destroyed. It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods, — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's time — and long before that — God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, levelling tempests and floods, but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that."

John Muir

A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great or beautiful cathedral.

Theodore Roosevelt

"Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does."

George Bernard Shaw