Scottish Forestry has today published a new ‘walk-through’ guide to creating new woodlands as part of the national drive to boost tree planting.

The step by step guide, aimed at small landowners, breaks down the process of preparing a woodland creation application into easy bite-sized chunks.

It helps to assess if the land is suitable for tree planting, through to preparing and submitting an application for a forestry grant.

Announcing the new guide to coincide with this year’s AgriScot event, John Dougan, Head of Operational Development at Scottish Forestry said:

“Around 80% of all approved woodland creation applications are from small to medium sized projects – mainly farmers or crofters.

“Feedback suggests that some of these smaller landowners may be finding the learning curve in creating new woodlands a bit daunting at first. We want to remove this barrier and make it as easy as possible for them, and this new guide aims to do just that.

“Creating new woodlands, both large and small can have a positive impact in the green recovery of Scotland. It plays an important part in the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic by supporting the economy, jobs and contributes greatly in the fight against climate change.”

The new Preparing Woodland Creation Applications guide is also accompanied by a simplified small woodlands operational plan, which can be used to support all grant applications up to 5 hectares in size.

The new guide can be found here.