In the mid 90s, a group of friends in the Scottish borders said, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could restore a whole bare valley to native woodland.  That dream has become a reality and the Borders Forest Trust have planted nearly 2 million trees across the borders – many by volunteers.

The first trees were planted at Carrifran Wildwood on millennium day.  When money was being raised to buy the land – crowd funding in its earliest form, the leaflet used had a photo of a rowan tree and the slogan, “Where one tree survives…. a million trees will grow”. This rowan tree stood almost alone in bare valley. Carrifran Wildwood now boasts around 700,000 trees.  In years to come, the survivor rowan will be obscured from view and will be just one tree among many.

[PHOTO – The Survivor Tree – Fi Martynoga, one of the original group. Credit: Aiden Maccormick/Scotlandsbigpicture.com/WTML]

This year, the Borders Forest Trust celebrates its 25^th birthday and the ‘Survivor Tree’ is the UK entry competing to be named European Tree of the Year.  The rowan is one of the smallest and youngest trees in the competition. It is a symbol of hope, a testament to what a grassroots community charity can accomplish in terms of landscape scale ecological restoration – rewilding.

Please help us promote what can be achieved in the UK in terms of rewilding and creating wild spaces by voting for our tree in the European Tree of the Year competition.

LINK: https://www.treeoftheyear.org/

Voting opens 1^st Feb