The power of community reforestation: how locals are restoring Ireland
Community members from across Ireland gather to plant native trees in partnership with Reforest Nation and EcoSikh Ireland, showcasing the power of local action in restoring the country’s lost woodlands.
A land once covered in trees
The land of Ireland is green in ways the eye might take for granted, yet beneath that verdant surface lies an astonishing absence: the near disappearance of its native forests. Trinity College Dublin (2023) reports that today Ireland’s tree cover is scarcely 11% of the land — the lowest proportion in all of Europe. By contrast, the continental average hovers around 35%. At first glance, the rolling fields, hedgerows, and patchwork meadows suggest abundance. Yet step closer, and one finds that the forests of old, the native woodlands that once swathed the island in quiet, living green, have all but vanished.
The first forests and early inhabitants
Long ago, Ireland was a different place. The Agriculture and Food Development Authority (s.f.) traces the story back 12,000 years, when the ice of the last glaciation retreated and temperatures began to rise. Slowly, the first trees took root: juniper and willow, birch and hazel. By then, more than 80% of the land was cloaked in forest. For the first inhabitants, arriving roughly 9,000 years ago, these woods were a source of shelter, food, and tools — life lived in quiet symbiosis with the trees. Human presence left little mark at first, but that would change with time.
Three millennia later, the Neolithic farmers arrived. They cleared forests for crops, transforming the landscape with axes and fire. Pastures expanded, and young saplings were eaten by the livestock that grazed freely. Without trees to shield soil from rain, nutrients washed away, and peat began to accumulate. Over centuries, thick layers of peat formed in lowlands and mountains, capturing in their cold, dark depths the stumps and roots of trees long gone. By the end of the Bronze Age, Ireland’s forests had given way to a mosaic of pasture and bog, a landscape both productive and fragile.
Axes and rivers: the vanishing woodlands
From the early centuries of Christianity through to the 17th century, deforestation accelerated. Pluymers (2023) notes that colonial expansion — first English, then Scottish — drove large-scale clearance, converting woodland into farmland and pasture. Wood was in constant demand: oaks for houses, tools, and barrels; timber floated down rivers to feed trade and shipbuilding. By the late 19th century, industrial logging and mobile sawmills had removed nearly every ancient woodland, leaving only small fragments to survive.
Trading heritage for Sitka spruce
A dense Sitka spruce plantation viewed from above, representing the non-native monocultures that dominate Ireland’s modern forestry and contribute to ecological imbalance.
In the 20th century, Ireland’s forests remained impoverished. In 1925, just 1% of the land was forested, mostly in areas unsuitable for agriculture. The state sought solutions, introducing subsidies for tree planting to replace intensive farming. Yet, Trinity College Dublin (2023) points out, these programs fell short of achieving even the modest target of 18% forest cover. Much of what was planted were monocultures: Sitka spruce, a fast-growing conifer imported from Alaska. Today, non-native trees dominate, covering vast tracts while native species cling to less fertile soils. Only approximately 2% of Ireland is now home to native trees.
The consequences are not abstract. Non-native plantations disrupt ecosystems, degrade water quality, and fail to support native fauna. In contrast, native trees — oak, birch, hazel, alder — form the backbone of functioning habitats. Greene (2025) describes the Correl Glen forest in Fermanagh, a rare remnant of temperate rainforest. Here, oaks, birches, and hazels grow among rare ferns and wild strawberries, and more than a hundred species of lichens flourish. Such forests are isolated jewels, encircled by conifer plantations, representing less than 0.04% of Northern Ireland and under 2% of the Republic.
The pure reality: fragility and ecological imbalance
Daltun (2024) emphasizes the fragility of these ancient woodlands. In places like the Uragh forests on the Beara Peninsula, centuries-old oaks and birches persist beneath mosses and ferns, yet regeneration is nearly impossible. Introduced herbivores — sika deer and feral goats — consume new shoots, preventing trees from replacing the old. Even with fences and invasive species management, natural recovery remains precarious. The absence of Ireland’s original predators, such as wolves and lynx, has left herbivore populations unchecked, an imbalance that persists into the present.
The highlands, too, tell a story of loss. Forgarty (2023) recounts a 1995 conference in Galway, where farmers and conservationists warned that overgrazing, coupled with agricultural subsidies, was eroding biodiversity. Hills once rich in flora and fauna were being reduced to degraded peatlands and conifer plantations. Fires in spring, now increasingly common, were barely mentioned then, yet they have since become a tragic regularity. The tension between agricultural policy and ecological restoration has deep roots: subsidies encouraged intensive sheep grazing, then paid farmers to remove livestock — yet rules often punished natural regeneration, resulting in repeated burning and degradation.
Still, even amid these losses, hope emerges. Small forest fragments retain ecological significance, storing carbon and providing water to rivers and streams. They offer spaces for recreation and potential hubs for restoration. Ireland’s remaining native trees carry the memory of the forests that once covered the island. They are living witnesses to 3,500 years of human influence, colonization, and economic pressures — and they are signals of what might yet be restored.
The history of deforestation, as Pluymers (2023) observes, is not only a chronicle of loss but a conversation about priorities: productivity versus ecological memory, economic expedience versus restoration. Arthur C. Forbes, a key figure in early 20th-century forestry policy, advocated for scientific, fast-growing plantations over nostalgic preservation. While his approach ensured timber supply, it also cemented a model that continues to influence Ireland’s landscapes today.
The quiet front line of restoration
As the 21st century progresses, Ireland confronts the consequences of these choices. Government afforestation programs and subsidies have increased overall tree cover, but the dominance of non-native species limits ecological recovery. Only by acknowledging the centuries of loss, the pressures of past policy, and the fragility of surviving woodlands can restoration take meaningful form.
Yet, something remarkable has begun to stir. Amid the monocultures and exhausted soils, communities across Ireland are planting again — not for profit, but for belonging. They are the quiet front line of a new kind of forestry: one rooted in care, culture, and continuity.
Volunteers gather with young saplings in hand, representing the quiet front line of Ireland’s reforestation movement—ordinary people restoring damaged landscapes one tree at a time.
Small groups, schools, and parishes are reclaiming the act of planting as a communal ritual — a way to heal the land and themselves. It is, in the words of one farmer, “not about subsidies, but about love for trees.”
This movement may appear modest—a schoolyard nursery, a roadside stand of alder, a handful of volunteers planting in the rain—but together, they plant the future in plain sight.
Ireland’s forests in the hands of communities
In Cork, the group Trees Please began in 2019 with a simple dream: to restore native species to their city’s soil. Working from small nurseries — often in volunteers’ gardens — they collect seeds, raise saplings, and share them freely. Thousands of native trees have since found homes across Cork, planted by neighbours, students, and local councils.
Farther west, in Galway, the Kinvara Ballinderreen Tree Gang has turned collective care into ritual. Their “tree-minding meitheals” bring together residents, schoolchildren, adults with intellectual disabilities, and newcomers from Ukraine. They plant and tend mini-forests in fields once bare, transforming community spirit into canopy.
The Dublin-based Stepping Stone Forests project takes the idea further, turning schoolyards and grassy verges into dense islands of native woodland. Inspired by the ecological concept of “stepping-stone habitats,” these patches link fragmented ecosystems, helping wildlife move and thrive across urban landscapes. Between 2021 and 2025, the project has planted nearly 60,000 native trees and shrubs — hazel, holly, hawthorn, Scots pine — in schools and public parks. Each grove becomes a classroom, a sanctuary, a sign of what restoration can mean.
Meanwhile, Pocket Forests, a social enterprise founded in Dublin in 2020, has created more than eighty micro-forests nationwide. Working with the Miyawaki method — dense, fast-growing native clusters — they partner with universities, housing trusts, and schools to bring woodland into the heart of cities. Their collaboration with the University of Galway and the Peter McVerry Trust established Ireland’s first urban native tree nursery: a small act with large symbolism.
Among these efforts is Reforest Nation, working alongside local groups and volunteers to restore native woodland through community planting.
Each of these groups shares a belief: that small patches matter. In a world of vast environmental loss, their forests are modest miracles — a way of saying we are still here, still planting, still hopeful.
The roots of change
Across the island, a network of quiet hands is reshaping what reforestation means. These are not grand government campaigns or corporate offsets, but citizen-led projects — each rooted in place, in story, in care.
In Meath, EcoSikh Ireland draws on spiritual ecology to reconnect faith with soil. Guided by Sikh teachings that see creation as sacred, the group plants trees as acts of devotion and gratitude. Since 2019, EcoSikh volunteers have restored small plots of native woodland and wetlands, celebrating each planting with prayer and song. They have also partnered with Reforest Nation to scale plantings in schools and community lands. Their vision is interfaith and planetary: that every community, regardless of creed, holds responsibility for creation.
Volunteers from EcoSikh Ireland and Reforest Nation gather in the Irish countryside to launch the Guru Nanak Freedom Forest, a community-driven native tree-planting initiative restoring biodiversity and renewing Ireland’s lost woodlands.
Meanwhile, Crann – Trees for Ireland, one of the country’s longest-running environmental charities, has been quietly at work since 1986. Crann’s mission — “to increase awareness of the importance of trees, hedgerows, and woodlands” — has led to hundreds of local projects, from school gardens to rural shelterbelts. Its Easy Treesie partnership mobilises schoolchildren to plant one million trees — one for every child in Ireland. To date, over 400,000 native trees have taken root.
Further south, the Gaelic Woodland Project carries a more mythic ambition. Founded in 2020, it aims to plant and protect native woodlands that embody Ireland’s ancient connection to the land — “forests of story and spirit,” as they call them. Their first site in Wicklow reintroduces oak, birch, and rowan, inviting volunteers to reconnect with ancestral ecology. In their gatherings, tree planting becomes ceremony; language and landscape intertwine. The project’s long-term dream — to create a vast “Gaelic Woodland Sanctuary” — is an act of cultural restoration as much as ecological.
In County Cork, the Green Economy Foundation’s “Trees on the Land” initiative continues this work at scale. Partnering with landowners, schools, and community groups, it has coordinated the planting of over 1.5 million native trees across Ireland and Northern Ireland since 2014. Each planting season becomes a festival of collaboration — oak, alder, and birch returning to farm edges, riverbanks, and roadsides once bare.
The Hometree Charity, based on the west coast, takes this principle deeper. Hometree began in 2015 with the simple aim of planting trees in Clare, and has since grown into one of Ireland’s most respected ecological nonprofits. Its projects now include reforesting degraded farmland, protecting old woodlands, and establishing long-term community stewardship. In the Burren and along the Atlantic, Hometree’s teams plant alder, willow, and birch, but also work to restore the soil itself — reducing grazing pressure, allowing natural regeneration, and reintroducing native shrubs. As they say: “We’re not just planting trees — we’re rebuilding ecosystems.”
The forest behind the fence
Among these efforts, one sees a pattern: a return to intimacy. Ireland’s reforestation movement is not driven by vast machinery or distant finance. It grows from kitchen tables and parish halls, from conversations after Mass or in the pub. People speak of “our trees,” “our hill,” “our saplings.”
Tree Share Ireland, for instance, was born from such simplicity — a community-driven initiative that connects tree donors with planters. Based in County Clare, it encourages those with access to land to share space with those who have the will to plant. The result is a patchwork of native groves sprouting across farms and villages — a social forest rooted in generosity. They’re not waiting for governments. They’re doing something real.
The same ethos runs through the Easy Treesie Project, where children are not just helpers but leaders. Every sapling is tagged, tended, and recorded. Teachers speak of the transformation it brings: how a child who plants a tree returns years later to see it taller than themselves.
These projects reflect what environmental philosopher Timothy Morton calls the mesh: the interwoven network of life that binds species and systems together. Ireland’s communities are weaving themselves back into that fabric. Each tree is both symbol and action — a small defiance against despair.
A global signal
Ireland’s forests may be small in scale, but their revival carries a message that echoes far beyond the island’s shores. In a world burning, flooding, and fading under the weight of climate crises and biodiversity collapse, the quiet, stubborn work of communities, schools, and parishes planting native trees offers a different path: ecological repair does not need grand national mandates or corporate megaprojects — it begins wherever someone decides to actually care.
These local acts are profound. Each sapling in a schoolyard, each micro-forest on a parish green, is a defiance of centuries of environmental destruction. Ordinary hands are reclaiming power, showing that resilience grows from participation, not bureaucracy.
While distant capitals debate policies and sign climate agreements, Ireland’s communities are already acting. They are sending a clear signal to the world: restoration is possible, even from humble beginnings. Across urban neighborhoods and degraded farmland, the lesson spreads — care can start anywhere, and it can ripple outward, inspiring others to take root.
This is only the beginning.
Forests remember
Standing in a young woodland near Ennistymon, you can hear it: the hum of rebirth. The soil is dark again, rich with fungi and worm. Birch leaves flicker in the Atlantic breeze, and beneath them, ferns uncurl. You might see children from the local school running between the saplings they planted last spring, their laughter mixing with the wind.
It’s here that Ireland’s reforestation story turns from loss to renewal. What was once a cautionary tale of deforestation has become a testament to resilience. These small forests are not relics of what was, but seeds of what could be — living symbols.
The poet John Montague once wrote that “the whole landscape a manuscript / we had lost the skill to read.” These new forests teach us that literacy anew.
The movement’s power lies as much in remembering what was lost as in planting what will grow. A child planting an oak today does so with the awareness that their great-grandchildren might one day rest beneath its shade. In that act, something ancient returns: a sense of time beyond the human span, a recognition that we belong to something vast and green and still unfolding.
Epilogue: the forest yet to come
Planting a tree becomes a defiance, a moral reply to generations of taking without giving back.
Ireland, once Europe’s most deforested nation, is showing that the future need not repeat the past. Through community, imagination, and persistence, it is re-growing not only forests but faith in collective power.
We may not live to see these trees tall. But that is the point: someone once planted for us. Now it is our turn.
Tools rest in a field of new saplings during a community reforestation project in Ireland.
References
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