Who we are

We’re a family run project based in Scotland with a passion for small scale, intimate rewilding and reforesting projects – the kind where a family or a group of friends can transform a piece of land. Over the last ten years, we’ve been slowly reforesting and rewilding a 47 acre site of rough grazing land near Pencicuik, overlooking the Pentland Hills, and living and working on a woodland smallholding near Elgin called Badgers Wood, managing an ancient oak woodland, creating a diverse orchard of apple, pear, plum, cherry and but trees, whilst raising our family in nature, and establishing a forest nursery growing oaks, hazel and other native trees.

Our original inspiration for the project was a friend, Simon Colley, who raised his family in a woodland of his own creation in South Lanarkshire, near to Wiston Lodge. Well, that and watching the beautiful puppet show, “The Man Who Planted Trees” by Puppet State Theatre at the Edinburgh Festival many years ago! I think it I were to try to sum up why I still love this work, it’s seeing how humans can help change and transform a piece of land into something special, and how doing that transforms them in the process. We’ve very much learnt as we go along, and continue to do so, and I would encourage anyone who wants to do this kind of work – what some people call “Wild Service” – to just jump in and start.

The starting point…

Who we are

Simon Colley is a woodsman with a lifetimes experience of woodland crafts and carpentry, with a passion for re-foresting and natural building techniques. Over the last 20 years Simon has succesfully restored an ex-plantation forest into a healthy decidous woodland in South Lanarkshire. He’s a musician, a bit of of a rogue, and thinks he’s the god of table tennis! Simon

Sarah Clover Harris Moon is a skilled craftswoman and designer, and a mum of four living in Edinburgh. She has experience working with adults with learning difficulties within a garden setting and has seen first hand the immense benefits outdoor activities can have and how nourishing it can be. She and her partner Tom share a love of foraging, cooking wild food, travel and adventure.

Tom Moon – well that would be me….I’m a former radio and film-maker who has worked for the BBC and the Guardian as an online journalist, although I’ve pretty much fully rewilded myself by now. I’ve divided my time over the last decade between our land work and raising the family, including many years as a dedicated homeschooling dad. With us having recently moved back to Edinburgh, I hope to rekindle some of my work as a radio maker and grass roots community journalist.

Scarlett, Ash, Oran and Ember...well, those are our lovely kids. They’ve all grown up with this project, and with the trees…helping out on the land projects, collecting acorns and seeds, growing veg, harvesting tatties, digging ponds, making wood chip for the ruit trees, harvesting apples and fruit, making juices and rowan berry jelly, splitting firewood, and just camping out. It’s been the background to their childhood, and sometimes I think we take that for granted. Over the last year though, we’ve moved back to the city, and I can see how deep the connection to the nature really is. Scarlett is an artist and a young author, Ash is a lego and engineering fanatic, Oran want to be a geologist and a rockhound, and our youngest, Ember, is a rock climber, a lover of nature and flowers, and the fiestiest of the lot of them (she has to be really!)

The family journey so far…

Dave Forsyth and Ronan are wonderful family friends who live on the land at Penicuik and help look after it for us. Dave is one of those incredibly capable guys who can do anything – a former chef, a tree surgeon, a builder and carpenter and a keen mountain-biker. We share a deep love of the land there, and our families have been lucky enough to watch it change and develop over time – watched how the new woodland and the deeper, ungrazed grasses have created more habitats for birds, animals and insects – watched as owls and birds of prey have increased in number there as the biodiversity and the prey increase in numbers. It is a beautiful but slow process, accelerating in recent years as the trees start to create shelter for each other.

I’d also like to include an honourable mention to the wonderful Dirty Weekenders, the Edinburgh University society, who have been coming over the last year to help us remove and recycle thousands of plastic tree guards and planted saplings with us. They’ve been an absolute joy to work with!