Protect Earth has a very simple mission - it isn’t complex. Our mission is to plant a lot of trees.
To plant a lot of trees, we work with anyone! We work with large, multinational companies. We work with private landowners with acreage into the thousands. We work with small landowners.
Especially small landowners. We know navigating the bureaucracy of trying to do good is mind-melting. Where to start? What to plant? When to plant? Where to plant? How much will it cost me to try to do some good and fight climate change? It’s going to take how long to plant that number of trees? The whole process is a minefield.
Large corporates and the like can delegate the solving of all these questions to someone else. Small landowners don’t have that luxury and can easily get overwhelmed by the forest of information and requirements and be dissuaded from planting that first tree.
In this piece, we’ll simply do a walkthrough of who we consider small landowners, how we can help smallholders enliven their land, the benefits for smallholders, and the commitments of reforesting land.
Who is a smallholder?
It’s a great question, and if you’ve asked this question, we hope the answer surprises you!
We have worked with small landowners who have between 1 acre to 25 acres. Roughly, that’s just over one football pitch, up to 25 football pitches.
Have you won the smallholder lottery? Are you a smallholder? Want to plant more green things in your smallholding? Keep reading!
Our part of helping you get greener spaces
First, we’d like to chat with you to understand the land’s history and your future goals.
After that, our areas of support breakdown across three significant areas:
We’ll consult with you and check out your land to make sure what’s being planted has the best chance of being impactful,
We’ll support you in identifying the right grants, and if the standard grants don’t work out we have other sources of funding for your project,
We’ll be there alongside you getting our hands dirty and helping plant your new green space.
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The beginnings of a new woodland at one of our smallholders projects! [/caption]
Consultation
We plant native trees with an appropriate mixture of species. To make sure we nail the mixture right, an ecologist from Protect Earth can come and visit your smallholding, take some photos of the proposed planting areas, and whip up a site report making a tailored plan for you. We’ll recommend a mixture of tree species, taking your suggestions on board. If you don’t like a certain species or prefer another, we’ll find a compromise, because it’s your land.
Funding
Doing good for the planet is not free. To plant trees and give them the best chance for survival, it’s necessary to buy a few things. The bulk of project costs are added up through buying trees (an obvious cost), tubes (sheathes that go around a tree protecting them from being eaten and weather), stakes (for securing the tubes around the trees), and mulch mats (which can reduce later maintenance effort - no weeding required).
If you’re offering up your land to be overtaken by trees, you should not pay any of these costs. That’s what we think.
Several different funding sources are available depending on the size of your plot of land, where you are located in the UK and the time of year you are making enquiries. But, we have a broad current database that we’ll cross-reference to match up all these questions with the right source of funding to cover these costs.
Volunteers
Believe it or not, tree planting is as wintertime an activity as Christmas markets and staying by fire!
That’s right. When it’s cold and wet outside, and the sun doesn’t show itself at all, it is the best time to plant trees. It’s not a pleasant time. We know - we’re out there every winter.
So, we don’t wish to burden you with planting hundreds or thousands of trees on your own in those conditions.
We’d be happy to come to share the burden and make the day go a little faster while getting to know you and other tree-planting volunteers (who we can help to find).
In our experience, the more, the merrier.
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Volunteers coming together on a beautiful winter day! [/caption]
Benefits of planting trees
Simply planting woodlands and being surrounded by growing trees and the wildlife it invites is reward enough. It is so satisfying to see the joy on smallholders’ faces when they see their smallholding being planted and hear the genuine excitement in their voices as they talk about the future of their woodlands!
But there are other benefits to planting trees. If you’ve landed on this page and read this far - you’re probably already aware of the benefits of planting trees. There’s no harm in refreshing!
Financial benefits to tree planting
Trees planted around buildings can reduce heating costs by slowing down cold winds. In the summer, trees can reduce cooling costs by providing shade. Planting shelterbelts along the edge of a field, and clusters of trees within a field, can add a cooling effect for livestock. One way or another, the earth is getting hotter and hotter year after year, so having respite from its sometimes punishing heat is something to look forward to.
Woodlands can provide extra fuel for biomass boilers.
Landowners can receive an income from their woodland through carbon credits, but it’ll need to be at least 10 acres being planted. If you can talk a few neighbours into joining in we can help you all with a joined application, and you can keep the income . The easy-to-digest guide goes each acre of woodland will produce 200 tonnes of carbon credits. As of 2023, every tonne of carbon sequestered earns between £7 and £20 /tCO2e. At the lower end of the range, an acre can earn £1,400! That number is expected to go up substantially over the years.
Environmental benefits of tree planting
The biggest benefit of trees that we all hear about all of the time is the carbon they remove and store. This is tremendously beneficial for us all, as the UK aims to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Results show the UK is missing its reforestation goals year on year, so more help is needed.
Trees are generous souls. They continue to do good as they sequester carbon.
They protect against natural elements like wind and flooding! Trees also reduce soil erosion and improve soil quality.
Smallholder commitments
Don’t worry - planting a tree doesn’t require the same level of maintenance as a baby or a new pet! You’ll still be able to afford a life, sleep the whole night through, and go away on holidays without needing to find a decent kennel!
Nonetheless, while trees are resilient and stoically independent, they require a little TLC.
As we mentioned in the section on funding - weeding. It would be terrible to go through the effort of all those steps only for a tree to be choked by weeds. So, as the weeds sprout like, well… weeds, we ask that you stay on top of it. We’re not Kew Gardens - we don’t expect a totally weed-free space. Just taken back enough to let your new woodland grow.
When it comes to bigger maintenance like annual check-ups on what’s living and what’s dead, replacing saplings, or thinning, we can handle that for you.
To sum up
As you can probably guess, this is the generalised process for us supporting small landowners to plant on their land.
We have helped loads of small landowners actualise their goals of getting more helpful and beautiful greenery onto their land, and in a later piece, we will talk with landowners about their goals and how we helped them.
But, again, as a generalised guide, this is how and where we help small landowners from all over the UK to plan planting projects, get funding, get trees, and plant.
If you are a small land owner, email us a line on working together. We’d love to hear about your land and your goals.