Replanting Britain: 'It’s about the right tree in the right place'

Less than 1 per person a year is spent on planting English trees, but past mistakes loom large

In 2018, about 1,400 hectares of trees were planted in England, against a government target of 5,000 hectares. Less than 1 per person per year is spent on planting English trees, and less than 2 across the UK, according to estimates by Friends of the Earth, compared with 90 per person per year on roads and 150 on fossil fuel subsidies. Scotland has succeeded in planting more trees, but the UK is still one of the least wooded countries in Europe, with only 13% tree cover, compared with about 32% in Germany and 31% of France. Those trees are also unevenly distributed: tree cover is about 10% in England, 15% in Wales, 19% in Scotland, and only 8% in Northern Ireland.

The reasons for the lack of woodland across the UK stretch back centuries, from the timber needed for ships to bolster the empire's navy and the industrial revolution, to the first world war, when the countryside was so denuded that the government set up the Forestry Commission in 1919 to reforest emptied land and provide a national resource to meet future needs.