Over the last nine months, we’ve been lucky enough to have some amazing students from the Edinburgh Uni conservation club Dirty Weekenders coming to help with work on the land we are reforesting and rewilding near Penicuik.

They’ve been an absolute joy to work with and get to know, and the work days have felt both hugely productive and fun. Land projects like ours can sometimes feel like a somewhat lonely, long hard slog, particularly I think when you are working on a very raw piece of land like ours, which is former sheep grazing land. There is something amazing about 30 odd young people turning up by bus, strolling up the track to the land, and flooding the place with positive energy and vibes.

They’ve been up to help four times now – the first three visits we focused on removing the plastic tree guards, which we are going to be recycling in collaboration with Rainbow Recycling. Our Crowdfund to raise money to help recycle the plastic tree guards is still active – we rekcon we’ve removed about two thirds of the guards so far, and just need to get a couple more of the Rainbow bags to help us finish the job!

The last time the DW crew visited though, I wanted to do something a little more soulful with them, so we planted out a load of oak saplings that I have grown myself from acorns into one of the areas of the land where the existing saplings felt a little thin, along with some Scots Pine (also grown from seed) and some Rowan plugs. These last saplings I bought in from Alba Tree nursery, as I’ve never quite cracked growing Rowan from seed.

This spot has a lot of downy birch planted in it, and although much of the site is really quite wet and boggy, it’s actually a really dry section of the land, with a West facing aspect that get’s a lot of sunlight and wind. Just below it the ground get’s marchy again, but I suspect that this where the boulder clay on the land has steadily accumulated, filtered out and desposited by the rain over thousands of years.

Since we needed to dig holes for Oaks and Scots Pines anyway, at the last minute we decided to dig up some of the smaller Downy Birch and relocate them into the wetland area. Transplanting them like this is a trade off – the move so late in the planting season (Mid-April) would be tough for them, but if they survived, they would thrive in the wetter conditions.

Downy Birch is one of those very under-rated species of tree that doesn’t have much glamour compared to an oak or beech woodland, or even silver birch – but I was recently hiking with my eldest son Ash in the Caringorms, and saw some beautiful old Downy Birch that, whilst still only around five to six metres tall, had a huge prescence and character.

I hope you enjoy the pictures of us all working together on the land – the photos are courtesy of the dad of some of the volunteers, Dom, who is an amazing professional photographer based in London. His work is striking, artistic and philosophical – you can check it out here.

Stay posted and follow our Facebook page for updates on the project – I’m hoping to organise an Open Day and more volunteering opportunities over the summer 🙂

Tom