Mooncroft is a family scale reforesting and rewilding project that we began nearly ten years ago, with the idea of transforming 47 acres of rough grazing land near Penicuik into a more biodiverse, productive and inspiring landscape. We have planted over 16,000 trees, and whilst we had some grant funding to help cover a percentage of the initial work to plant and deer fence the saplings, there is no financial support for the massive job of removing and recycling the tree guards. 

By this stage the trees are starting to outgrow the guards, and they can damage the trees by trapping moisture on the trunks, encouraging mould, fungi and pests. The guards also start to get brittle from exposure to sunlight and wind, and and can shatter and end up in the ground. 

Luckily, we are timing our tree guard removal just right, and have found some great folk to work with. Rainbow Recyling is a scheme that take used plastic tree guards, processes them, and then recycles them into new plastic products for use in woodland creation. They will collect and recycle our guards for a minimum fee of £500.  

And we’ve had some wonderful help from Dirty Weekenders, a University of Ediburgh Society, who have been coming out to the land in groups of 20-30 students, braving the winter weather to take the guards off (up until that point, it was me and the kids chipping away at it!) 

We are asking for your help with some of the costs of the removal and recycling – we pay a donation each time the students come out to help us to cover their costs (transport, food etc) and the cost of the plastic recycling scheme itself.

If we manage to exceed our target, any additional funds will be put towards purchasing additional larch, alder and silver birch saplings, as these have been growing particularly well on the land!