Plant More Trees

ISABELLE: Hello and welcome to the Carbon Copy Podcast with me, Isabelle Sparrow. 

BRADLEY: And me, Bradley Ingham. 

ISABELLE: We’re back with another episode in our series, Do Something Bigger, where we’re exploring ways to create meaningful, collaborative change in the place where you live. Over the course of 2025, we’re covering 25 different actions that can make a difference: tackling carbon emissions, protecting wildlife and bringing communities together. If today’s action isn’t your thing, do come back for the next episode – it might be more up your street! 

Carbon Copy is a charity inspiring more big-thinking local action for climate and nature. This podcast series is part of our year-long campaign: 25 Big Local Actions in 2025. Do check out the show notes for more information, and subscribe now to hear the next episodes as soon as they land. 

BRADLEY: So today’s episode focuses on something that maybe feels really obvious—but is still one of the most effective things we can do: Plant More Trees. 

ISABELLE: Yep! Trees are basically nature’s superheroes. They absorb carbon dioxide, improve air quality, prevent flooding, boost biodiversity, provide homes for wildlife… and let’s be honest, they make everything look a lot nicer too. 

BRADLEY: Oh absolutely. Plus, they give us oxygen. And that’s kind of important, right? 

ISABELLE: Yeah yeah, just a little thing called breathing!  

BRADLEY: Oh yeah! 

ISABELLE: Let’s kick things off with some mind-blowing tree facts. Brad, how much carbon do you think a single mature tree absorbs per year? 

BRADLEY: Hmm, I’m going to guess… 20 kilograms? 

ISABELLE: Yeah that’s actually pretty close! It’s around 22 kilograms per year. Which might not sound like much, but when you think about entire forests, that’s millions of tonnes of CO₂ being taken out of the air. 

BRADLEY: That is crazy. And I read that one large tree can provide enough oxygen for how many people? 

ISABELLE: Two people! A single mature tree produces enough oxygen for two people every year. So basically, every time you plant a tree, you’re securing your own breathing buddy. 

BRADLEY: That sounds like the best kind of pet. You know it’s low maintenance, lives for decades, and it gives you free air. 

ISABELLE: Yeah, exactly I can’t imagine many cats or dogs would provide the same level of service.  

BRADLEY: Alright, I’m sold. Trees are officially legends. I think it’s about time we hear from the people that are planting them and making a real difference. 

ISABELLE: Our first guest today is Carl Rowlinson, co-founder of Plant One Cornwall. Carl and his team are working to create woodlands and plant trees across Cornwall to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis. We asked Carl about what started him on this journey. 

CARL: So I’m an arborist, I’ve been an arborist now for 20 years. So I started off climbing trees and anyone who kind of spends a bit of time around trees and especially be climbing them and you start to kind of wonder at that kind of how amazing these things are, these massive kind of structural beings that live amongst us and just people drive past them every day, but these are fantastic, fantastic things. But there was a defining moment when I was stood at Gwithian, looking across at the G7. So I was stood at the beach and you could look across to Carbis Bay. And it was when our world leaders descended upon Cornwall and they were discussing the kind of fate of humanity basically. And we all hoped, everybody hoped that the green agenda was going to be at least in the top three things they were going to talk about, it was going to be front and centre. And in the Bay of Godrevy, there was warships, there was jets flying overhead. Biden had just been flown in on Air Force One. So there was his kind of Apache helicopters flying around and it was kind of a penny drop moment to kind of witness all that kind of awesome show of power, that these aren’t the people who are going to make the decisions to put the environment and our livelihoods front and centre. So it was kind of a bit of a moment then when I was like, well, I actually left that moment feeling really depressed. And I was like, well, you know, we’re kind of in a little bit of trouble here.  

And then a friend of mine offered up a piece of land, he just had a kind of couple of acres spare. And he was asking me what to do. And I said, Oh, well, let’s plant some trees, you know, let’s start little woodland. So we started doing that. And it was those two events, I was like, well, maybe I should just create woodlands. And, you know, that small act of doing that one woodland really made me kind of feel connected and engaged with the problems that we were facing. And although that small woodland only had an effect on its locality for the wildlife around that woodland, it was kind of really important. So I thought, you know, there’s something nice about that, just being able to connect to something small and make a very small difference in a very small way. So that’s kind of where Plant One started from that kind of realisation that we can affect change, even if it’s on a small scale. 

BRADLEY: That’s quite a moment! Imagine standing there and realising that the real change isn’t gonna come from the top—it has to start with us. 

ISABELLE: Yeah, I think a lot of us working in this space have had moments maybe not quite as dramatic as that, but similar where we feel a moment of hopelessness looking at the political leadership perhaps not to be too specific. But then, yeah, to then pivot from that and make that shift to feeling like you can do something even if it small as he describes it. Although, I’m sure we’re gonna go on to hear that it’s not actually that small, now he’s getting his hands in the soil and making a difference. 

BRADLEY: Yeah definitely and those small-scale actions, like you said, they all grow into something much much bigger as we’ll see. 

ISABELLE: So whilst Carl is focused on woodland creation in Cornwall, a little bit further east in the Avon Valley, Avon Needs Trees is taking a different approach—one that centres on securing land to ensure trees are protected forever. So we asked Dave, who’s the CEO of Avon Needs Trees what inspired the organisation to take this route. 

DAVE: It felt like there was a gap in what was happening. So we knew there were lots of trees being planted. We knew that Bristol-Avon was particularly deforested, one of the least forested parts of the UK. But we knew that whilst trees were being planted, there was no one who was trying to buy new land to manage it for nature and to create new permanent woodlands. And that kind of thing happens, amazing work all across the country. But for some reason, we weren’t too sure in the early days that wasn’t happening in our area. So we set up with really quite a sharp focus as a new charity. Not trying to replicate what’s already happening, the great work that other people are already doing, a lot of it happening in our area, but really to raise money, buy land and create those new permanent woodlands and manage that land for nature. And that seems to be the gap, the niche for us, because that means that we keep that control over the land forever in perpetuity, which gives us full control to make sure those woodlands last well into the future. 

ISABELLE: I guess what’s really interesting with both of these organisations, is that they aren’t just about planting trees, they’re actually creating woodlands and there is a really important difference between the two. Carl explained why that distinction matters. 

CARL: We’re not a tree planting organisation, we’re a woodland creation organisation. And there’s a kind of small but important difference between those two things. We’re not here to just stick trees in the ground and then walk away. What we want to do is nurture the land, manage the land, and encourage natural regeneration to really take hold. So that we’re creating high quality woodlands. Each site is different. Every project is different. We, you know, we assess each site completely depending on the needs of the site. We’ve got some areas some projects where there’s no natural seed bank. You know, the woodland has been stripped back to its to nothing around those areas. So we’re not getting any blow in. We’re not getting any animals kind of depositing nuts and acorns and seeds. So on sites like that its more heavily towards tree planting. 

But then it’s managing the local wildlife as well. We’ve got a big population of deer as well. So we’ve got to look at ways to kind of move those or move constantly move those through the site. So deer fencing’s part of it, but also, you know, putting up things like broken CDs on fences, the glimmer of a broken CD will actually scare a deer away. 

But the real kind of work comes from nature, the heavy lifting that nature does. And that’s natural regeneration. So one of the things we need to do is remove the herbivores from the site. So that might be the rabbits, the deers, the livestock. And, you know, as I just said, fencing is a big part of doing that. But also, and you know, one of the best tools we’ve got is the bramble. And, you know, it’s often been referred to as the thorn is the mother of the oak tree. You know, what we really want to do is to let areas of bramble just kind of take over. And then it’s amazing to see because right in those kind of curls of bramble, you’ll just see an oak tree making its way up and no rabbit, no deer managed to get into that. And that’ll then start shading out the competitive grass. And then you’ll start this kind of these pioneer species, like the gorse and the hawthorn and the blackthorn and the willow, they start creeping in. And then amongst that, then you start seeing the star of the show, the Sessile oak, the Celtic oak is slowly making its way in. So, yeah, encouraging that that that kind of rewilding aspect that nature is really good at is a lot of the work. And yeah, that just comes from going into the ground and, you know, sheltering off some areas and letting some areas go wild. So there is a kind of a continuous process to this. 

BRADLEY: It’s interesting listening to this, it’s clearly such a different way of thinking about tree planting, like it not really about the numbers, it’s about creating whole ecosystems that can sustain themselves over time.  

ISABELLE: Yeah definitely. I think it’s really important to recognise the impact that this work is having beyond the woodlands themselves as well. We asked Carl more about how Plant One Cornwall was engaging the local community. 

CARL: Trees are a fantastic emotive thing. And it’s amazing, you know, when I do these kind of community outreach days, I always ask people what their favourite tree is. And people always say, oh, you know, well, maybe it’s an oak tree or something. And I go, no, no, what’s your favourite actual tree? You know, what tree do you have a special connection to? And then people kind of stop and sort of think and they go, oh, do you know what? Like my gran used to have this big, I think it was like a beech tree in my garden. And I used to pick conkers from this tree and they have kind of forgotten their relationship with trees. But when you kind of really drill down into people, it’s there. 

You forget that they’re part of our landscape. But when you actually stop and think about trees and about what they mean to you, everybody’s got a personal connection to them. So, yeah, we’re in a climate emergency now and trees are one of the best ways to connect back to nature and to have a visible impact on our wildlife and our community as well. You know, we work with school kids all the time. And, you know, you often see these like teenagers dragged out into the middle of nowhere, you know, cold and complaining about being in the middle of the Cornish countryside. But by the end of the day, when they planted a load of trees, they absolutely love it. And the great thing about the work that we do is we’re able to take kids and communities back to the site and watch them grow. And, you know, seeing people’s faces when they’re like, Oh, that’s the one I planted. Look how big it is. You know, it’s a really emotive way for people to connect nature and climate. 

ISABELLE: That’s so interesting to hear Carl talking about the way that people have maybe forgotten or lost their connection to trees, if you really think about it everybody does have a tree or trees that they feel particularly passionate about. Brad, what’s your favourite tree have you got one? 

BRADLEY: I think off the top of my head, so when me and my wife first got together we used to live near a park in Manchester and there’s a certain part in the park where all the trees kind of converged over each other. And every time I would kind of look up and just would just walk with my head like pointed up towards the sky like a lunatic. I think that’s like a very, strong key memory. And then also where we live now there’s basically a forest not too far away, which I’m very lucky to have, and um, yeah I think for sort of grounding me and making me feel calm, that collection of trees is good for me. What about you? Have you got anything that springs to mind? 

ISABELLE: It’s sort of hard to pick just one really, um, but there’s one in my parents’ garden where I grew up in Colchester and it’s not a native tree, but it’s actually a Christmas tree and when we first moved to that house when I was three and a half, it was around Christmas time and my parents just bought this little tree for a petrol station. It was like, I dunno, 30 centimetres tall, like one of those tiny little trees that you get and then after Christmas they planted it in the garden. And it is now, I dunno fifty foot tall? It is a massive tree and it is just so lovely to know that that has been there growing with us for the last, you know, thirty-five years or something. So um, yeah it’s a special one. 

I expect if you think really hard, you can think of a tree that gets you going and if you feel that trees generally are your thing then maybe this is the climate action for you. If you think you’d like to know more about planting trees or if you think you’d like someone else to know more about it, do share this episode with them. And also share our resource on our website about planting trees. The link is in the show notes and we’d love to get more people involved! 

ISABELLE: Getting these projects off the ground takes money, and people power. We asked Dave about how Avon Needs Trees raised the capital to purchase land for woodlands. 

DAVE: Our first purchase, was a woodland that’s now called Hazeland in North Wiltshire, on the outer edges of the Bristol-Avon catchment area.  If we managed to raise a quarter of a million pounds from other sources then The Lottery would match fund us to help us buy that land, plant the new woodland, do public engagement on the land and that kind of thing. So you can imagine for a brand new charity, that’s a huge target to try and reach. That was a lot of real genuine grassroots community effort. People going out there fundraising as well as engaging with businesses and getting corporate donations, getting donations from parish councils and town councils and really just trusts and foundations and any mechanism that could be found to bring together on quite a tight time frame, that that large sum of money. And then we went from planting 10 acres in our first year, 10 acres in our second year, up to 113 acres in our and fourth year, three times bigger again over the next two years, this winter and next year.  

BRADLEY: Wow that’s a bit mind blowing really. Just the fact that they’ve gone from crowdfunding a single site to buying hundreds of acres just shows how much communities really want this to happen. I guess for context it might be helpful for us to visualise how big these are because I mean, I can’t really picture how big an acre is. So, 422 acres is the equivalent to 325 football pitches side by side. 

ISABELLE: Wow! That is a pretty big action! I guess it’s important to mention that Avon Needs Trees are not just looking at how many trees they plant but who is getting involved in the process. So we asked Dave about the role of volunteers and how they’re working to make tree planting more accessible to everyone. 

DAVE: We are so lucky. Our volunteer number is now up to 1200 volunteers, and rising each year, I’d say that it does give us the luxury of saying, looking at our volunteer base, looking at equal opportunities, monitoring information and so on, and thinking, well, who is not coming out to plant trees? Who are we missing? And the types of demographics that you wouldn’t be surprised who have less access to nature, generally less ability to get around, would maybe find a rural environment more physically challenging, for example. So it allowed us to really focus then on how do we get our volunteering base to look more like our broader community and to do outreach work and to bring very deliberately different types of people on site who weren’t naturally coming or didn’t find that opportunity quite so accessible. 

And what we found strategically I suppose is that if we’re trying to tackle the climate emergency and nature emergency, the people who will be most impacted by climate change in the future are those people that we weren’t reaching. So to be able to reach them, bring them on board, advise, education, upskilling, motivation, we feel like we’re helping, as well as them helping us, we’re helping the exact right groups of people who are going to be most affected by climate change as we go on, which feels like a very kind of nice, cohesive mission to have. 

ISABELLE: It’s so nice to hear that it’s not just about planting trees—it’s about growing a movement where everyone feels like they have a stake in protecting nature and I think it’s something that when you think about tree planting and kind of conservation in general, it is something that has a bit of an issue with diversity and bringing people on board. And so for an organisation like Avon Needs Trees to be really really focusing on this and ensuring that more people are able to join in is brilliant. 

BRADLEY: Absolutely. And of course, want more people to join in across the country – so we asked Dave for his top tips for getting something like this started where you live. 

DAVE: It’s always worth talking to the rest of the organisations in your area, so much knowledge and expertise and people that can help in every single part of the country, local nature partnerships, local wildlife trusts, community forest. There’s lots of people who can help if you’d like to start on that journey and really try and talk to people who’ve done what you’re wanting to do. And ideally, who’s got the time and resources to be able to kind of package that up and help someone through it. There’s nothing new under the sun, as they say, so there’s always someone that’s done it before. And if you can learn the hard lessons from the people that have done it before, then you get a much smoother ride. 

BRADLEY: Ah, we’ve come back to it again! So this keeps coming up in nearly every episode—learning from each other, sharing knowledge, and building on what’s already there and already working. And that’s exactly what Carbon Copy is all about—helping people take local action by learning from projects that are already making a difference. Because cause if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, you realise that no one has to start from scratch. The answers are already out there. 

ISABELLE: So speaking of the bigger picture, we wanted to hear from Carl and Dave about their visions for the future and what tree planting could look like if we really went all in. 

CARL: Down in Cornwall, we were 8% canopy cover. In the UK, it’s 13% canopy cover. And in Europe, it’s 30% canopy cover. So it wasn’t that long ago, we had 80 to 90% canopy cover all the way through. But we decimated our tree cover and down in Cornwall, we got down to 2% canopy cover in the in the early part of the 1900s. And we’ve managed to boost that by 6% to 8%. Now my vision would be to boost our overall canopy cover to something like the low 20% where trees are much more part of our landscape, you know, hedgerows are part of our landscape, woodlands are part of our landscape. And also, another thing is we got public access to these areas as well. So keeping open those footpaths and keeping open public access to our green space is an important part of engaging. Let’s put the trees back in. And let’s put the people back in with the trees as well. So that’s my that’s my kind of goal. 

DAVE: As a goal, helping the whole country meet its targets would be amazing. Feels quite out of reach at the moment, but there’s tree planting targets, there’s managing land for nature targets, there’s carbon sequestration targets, playing a substantial part in everyone collectively meeting that goal would be amazing. And I think for us as an organisation, what that looks like is to try get the West of England to hold up its part in that, which means creating a lot more woodlands, trying to expand our impact. We’d like to see that rise continue and to be able to just through our personal effort, be able to expand those areas of woodlands in appropriate places and taking care of existing woodland along with that. But beyond that, it would be amazing to be able to find that resource to take what we’ve done, that model, define it, package it up, replicate it and ideally help people across the country to be able to do the same as we have done. 

BRADLEY: This is definitely some big picture thinking going on here. 

ISABELLE: Yeah definitely, it really puts things into perspective. The kind of scales that these guys are hoping to achieve. Let’s hope that we can get there! What have we learned today, how can we help? 

BRADLEY: So first, that planting trees isn’t just about numbers—it’s about creating thriving, resilient woodlands and making sure they can support wildlife and also that they’re adaptable to climate change, as well as being about the people can benefit from those woodlands. 

ISABELLE: We’ve learned that owning the land is a game-changer. Projects like Avon Needs Trees are securing land so that these forests don’t just get planted, but are protected forever. 

BRADLEY: We also discussed our favourite trees and the fact that everyone, if you think hard enough, has a personal connection to one somewhere! We’ve also seen that tree planting can and should involve people from all backgrounds. The more inclusive these projects are, the stronger they become. 

ISABELLE: And finally, we’ve learned that planting trees isn’t just a feel-good action—it’s an essential part of tackling the climate and biodiversity crises. Whether it’s creating new woodlands, restoring ancient rainforests, or even just bringing back lost hedgerows, every single tree counts. 

BRADLEY: Thank you very much for listening to the Carbon Copy Podcast! Our next episode will be about Generating Energy Locally—so make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss it! 

ISABELLE: That’s right, Brad—this next episode is going to be electrifying! 

BRADLEY: Oh you really went there didn’t you! 

ISABELLE: Look, I’m just trying to spark some interest. 

BRADLEY: I think it’s fair to say these jokes are shocking… This episode if you can’t tell, was written and presented by me, Bradley Ingham. 

ISABELLE: And me, Isabelle Sparrow. Brad also produced and edited the episode. Huge thanks to our guests, Carl Rowlinson from Plant One Cornwall and Dave Wood from Avon Needs Trees. Until next time, goodbye!