Agroforestry is a land management approach which combines agriculture with planting trees. It boosts productivity of the things we grow, it improves the soil and has positive impacts on the wildlife. The positive effect of agroforestry on carbon sequestration is promising but not well defined, so we are using these techniques because they make our forest healthier and allow us to produce sustainable products, but also to test how much of an effect they have on carbon sequestration. If we can help prove that they increase carbon sequestration on top of all of their other benefits, it will mean that these earth-friendly techniques are more likely to be used all over the world.

Grazing animals are a fundamental and necessary force of natural disturbance that we need to create healthy forests. Animals trample, root, rub, spread manure and disperse seeds, creating favourable conditions for trees and wildflowers to grow. Rotational grazing is an agroforestry technique that uses the power of grazing in a controlled way by splitting up land into many different sections, and allowing animals to graze each section for only a short amount of time. This ensures that the benefits of grazing are realised, without over grazing the land. We use Woolly Mangalitsa pigs to graze our forests as they are a hardy forest breed.

Yes, we will be promoting natural regeneration alongside planting. Much of our land is agricultural pasture that we can’t regenerate, because conditions are not suitable. We plant to ensure woodlands establish in a realistic time frame. In the right conditions, where sites have an available and viable seed source we will opt for natural regeneration.

In Scotland there is a right to roam, with certain restrictions. Generally our woodland is free access. However, sites like Brodoclea are deer fenced and locked to prevent the pigs escaping.

We’re advised by Scottish Woodlands and our in house experts who between them have been designing and managing new forests in Scotland for over 85 years.

Yes, we are following a planting plan approved by Scottish Forestry. We always plant the right tree in the right place, meaning that we plant an appropriate species on appropriate tree planting land. We would never plant on an existing important habitat, or on peat.

We are planting for what the native forest would have been. This includes birch, alder, oak and rowan.

It’s true, tree planting isn’t always good. Planting the wrong species, planting monocultures, or planting on inappropriate land (deep peat, wildflower meadows, etc) can do more harm than good. That’s why we have our tree planting scheme verified by Scottish Forestry to ensure that we always plant the right tree in the right place.

This depends on a lot of factors. Plantings have roughly a 85 to 90% survival rate. We carry out regular audits to review and track the survival rate of our planting, and we ensure any trees that do not survive are replanted in the first 5 years of growth.

Our trees are at a very low risk to wild fires as Scotland is fairly wet. We check our trees up to 5 years and replace if needed, they don’t typically need to be replaced. However, we have provision if any replacement trees are required.

Where possible all trees we plant are from a local seed source with the right ‘provenance’, so are suitable for the land we are planting on. We currently partner with a number of local UK nurseries to source our trees; meaning we can be sure that our trees are healthy and responsibly grown here in the UK.

In Scotland we plant from Oct – April, in England we plant from Nov – March, we may also use cold store trees and cells to extend these timings by a few weeks.

Tree shelters are often required to protect our freshly planted saplings from deer. Historically, tree shelters been made from plastic, we’re on a mission to change that.
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Whenever possible we avoid using shelters. However, when they are required we’re using Vigilis-Bio Biodegradable Tree Shelters, from Suregreen. The unique material used to make Vigilis-Bio is radically different from regular tree shelters. After a minimum of five years the Vigilis-Bio tree shelter is designed to start to break up, and as soon as particles and small fragments fall to the ground, where they come into contact with the soil, they will act as a food source for soil bacteria and micro-organisms, eventually being absorbed harmlessly into the natural environment.
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​We’re also trialing NexGen Tree Shelters, they’re predominantly made from British wool, together with some clever, innovative, bio-based chemistry reducing the environmental impact of plastic in our countryside.

Carbon offsetting means calculating your carbon footprint and then purchasing equivalent “credits” from projects that prevent or remove the emissions of an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases elsewhere.

There are lots of changes you can make to ensure you reduce the size of your carbon footprint before you think about offsetting – flying less, eating less meat, switching to a clean energy supplier, drive less and try and buy second hand clothes. In our modern lives it is near impossible to get your carbon footprint all the way to zero through lifestyle alone, so to offset the rest you can buy our carbon through our partners, Ecologi and Project Wren.

Permanence means how do we guarantee that the carbon we have locked up stays locked up? The three most common pitfalls to permanence are: land use change, natural disturbance and use of harvested biomass.

• Land use change – because we own our land, we can guarantee throughout our lifetimes at least that the land will not be used for anything else. We want to plant forests that stay standing. Even past our lifetimes we are in the process of structuring a covenant that will protect the land from any land use change in perpetuity.
• Natural disturbance – we plant forests in the UK, so luckily we have very low risk of forest fire, drought or storms that could seriously damage our forests.
• Use of harvested biomass – as we explain above we will harvest approximately 1% of timber from forests per year at maturity to both create a mixed-age forest and to replant some trees to sequester more carbon. The danger with harvesting biomass is that if it is burnt, left to rot or used in low quality building materials that aren’t looked after, the carbon is released. Therefore we sell our harvested timber to sustainable, high quality companies using  it for furniture or house building, and we turn the offcuts and unused trimmings into biochar and apply it back onto our land.

The carbon sequestered across all of our project sites is measured and verified using internationally recognised standards and protocols. By following the quantification guidelines laid out in these standards we ensure our carbon is counted and reported accurately. The standards provide carbon calculators into which we plug all project data. These numbers are then verified by independent auditors on a regular basis.

We sell carbon removal credits from various different project types – reforestation, biochar and enhanced weathering. Credits from these projects are priced differently and reflect current market values. For more information on pricing please contact: hello@thefutureforestcompany.com

Though most tree orders will be fulfilled immediately, due to planting requirements, there may be up to 6 months between the order date and tree allocation.

Our woolly rare-breed Mangalitsa pigs are an eco-friendly asset to our forests, they trample the bracken and naturally help restore the all important biodiversity of the forest floor. Our curly-haired friends ​hardy nature means they can live in the forest with little intervention, in fact they love to live outdoors.
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​They’re wonderful for soil regeneration and spreading manure. This all adds to restoring the important biodiversity of the forest floor.
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All that curly hair can even help to carry and spread seeds
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Rewilding is a controversial term, in one sense it can mean reintroducing apex predators like wolves which could be harmful to livestock. Alternatively, it can simply refer to large scale conservation through habitat restoration.

Our aim is to get to landscape scale restoration, where we buy and connect enormous plots of land. Some we will plant, some we will leave to reforest naturally. We need to have scale for really impactful rewilding. We’re not against reintroducing apex predators, but it’s just not what we’re doing.

The reason we keep pigs is for regenerative agriculture purposes on our land. The pigs prepare the land for tree planting by clearing plants, trampling the ground and spreading manure. They’re an alternative to using pesticides. In a natural old forest system this would be done by other large herbivores such as wild bore, so we are mimicking that.

For leakage purposes we may sell a very small number of animals every year although this is by no means a significant part of our business.

We are fighting climate change by planting forests that remove CO2 from the atmosphere at scale. We buy land, plant trees, restore peatland and protect biodiversity. 

We use woodland creation grants where we can which are helpful but they are by no means sufficient in themselves to achieve our aims. We have raised private funding to be able to achieve what we have done so far, and will be raising significantly more to scale up very quickly. We understand that scale and speed are essential in tackling the climate crisis.

Our model is highly scalable. The key is in being able to purchase appropriate tree-planting land, not just lease it, as it means we can guarantee the permanence of the carbon sequestered in our forests – basically we can guarantee the trees won’t be chopped down.

No, we’re a for-profit company because we want to reforest and restore as much land as we can, and to do that we need to show that forests can be an attractive business model. This allows us to attract funding from investors so we can grow quickly.