Inside an Englishwoman’s campaign to bring back Ireland’s missing ‘big old trees’

Time away in Kerry with the family is only complete with a bit of weather. So I find myself smack bang in the middle of that oh-so-familiar forecast: southerly winds reaching gale force 8 on Irish coastal waters from Carnsore Point to Mizen Head to Erris Head. The clouds hang low and threaten to bring the curtain down on the sea view. Too forceful for surfing but too grim to stay indoors, with the sound of the wind as it whistles around the house, we turn our backs on the Atlantic Ocean and head inland, hoping lakes and trees can offer a bit of respite from the storm.
And so we find ourselves in Glanteenassig, from Gleann Tí an Easaigh, the valley of the waterfalls, an expansive 450-hectare wood nestled in the Slieve Mish mountains. It feels remote and out of this world, but it is just a few kilometres from Castlegregory, with views of Brandon Bay, Tralee Bay and the Maharees.
We take the wooden boardwalk loop around Lough Caum, a deep glacial lake with wild brown trout and European eel, and down the side of the mountain, waterfalls cascade like streams of liquid mercury. The pathway developed by Coillte is unobtrusive; the wooden railings melt into the surroundings. All around us is colour: from the boulders of red sandstone to the trumpet-shaped honeysuckle, flushed orange, at the water’s edge; rowan trees adorned with vermilion berries; and the creamy green colour of the insect-devouring butterwort, a hairy little plant whose pointed leaves unite to form a star shape.
From the 1950s onwards, swathes of lodgepole pine and Sitka spruce were planted here for timber production. But in recent years, Coillte has felled trees and left some spaces to nature. Nestled in these patches are birch, alder and holly. Although completely outnumbered, it’s striking how they give shape and diversity to the broader landscape.
This is what Imogen Rabone speaks about when she emphasises the value of including native trees in these in-between, easily forgotten areas, be it the wilds of Kerry, schools in inner-city Cork, or urban parks in Dublin. Since 2013, Rabone has founded the Trees on the Land initiative, which has planted 3 million young trees across the island of Ireland.
From a farm in Hertfordshire in England, Rabone first noticed that the “big old trees” were missing from the Irish countryside during her years studying and working in Dublin. She felt an urgency to find a way to help people include trees in the landscape. It culminated in a decision one wild winter night as she was driving from Dublin to Coleraine when she lost her way and decided to pull into a gateway at the side of a road to look at a map. As she looked up, she noticed two enormous oak trees on either side of the gateposts – the very thing she felt was rapidly disappearing. It was there she decided to set up a tree-planting project.
And so, Trees on the Land was born. Free native trees are available to schools, colleges, community projects, farms and smallholdings, with a small charge – starting at €1 per tree – for anyone with a private garden. Rabone doesn’t buy or rent land but works with people who already own land or are part of a community that cares for space. The funding comes almost entirely from business sponsorship and donations, which gives her team flexibility to create a variety of schemes to suit nearly everyone – from those who can plant one tree to a farmer who needs 10,000 native saplings.
In the last few years, she’s seen a massive increase in businesses wanting to do something for nature in their local area – from small enterprises such as Foley’s Plumbing, who have planted 100 trees every year near their area in Cork, to major multinationals such as Microsoft, which funded 20,000 trees to be planted in local schools, sports clubs, Peamount Hospital and community centres in southwest Dublin.
From her base in Herefordshire, on the Welsh border, together with a team of seven, she works with several Irish nurseries to source the trees. For the main planting projects, the trees are grown in Ireland from Irish seed; the exception is for a small number of agroforestry and specialist orchard projects that use non-native or naturalised trees. She recently worked with arable farmers in Tipperary, Carlow and Kildare as part of an EU-funded project to design flagship sites for farmers to show how trees can be grown with crops to provide an income while helping nature and carbon sequestration.
Back in Glanteenassig, I search in vain for the handsome Kerry Slug, a juicy dark mollusc with splashes of cream on its back, which only likes this part of the country. A perfectly formed young frog appears on the path and jumps into a damp patch. Between the white stumps of the felled coniferous trees, I spot a small birch, ready to make the open ground its new home.