The Frisian countryside is turning green: results 2023-2024

In partnership with the Friese Milieufederatie and Landschapsbeheer Friesland, we’re making the beautiful Fryslân even greener. We’re restoring and reinforcing the unique Frisian countryside by planting landscape elements. Last planting season, we reached our goal: we planted more than 92,000 new trees and shrubs!

Reinforcing and restoring Frisian landscapes

Landscape elements are structures in a landscape like rows of trees, hedges or small copses. These natural features are essential for biodiversity in the Netherlands. Plants and animals find their food there, as well as shelter and a place to breed. Landscape elements also form a connecting corridor between various habitats.

Landscape elements have many more functions besides increasing biodiversity. For example, they sequester carbon, capture nitrogen and particulates, control pests and diseases in a natural way and ensure healthy soil. Trees also provide more coolness in hot summers.

Unfortunately, many kilometres and hectares of these landscape elements have disappeared from the countryside in recent years, due to the invention of barbed wire, scaling-up and land reparcelling. This is why Trees for All is working on restoring trees and hedges in the countryside.

Beammen foar Elkenien

In Friesland, we’re working with the Friese Milieufederatie, Landschapsbeheer Friesland and private landowners spread over 48 villages and towns in the province. Planting new trees and shrubs is important for conserving and reinforcing the unique Frisian landscapes – and along with them, also the habitats of numerous plants and animals!

Through this project, we’re also contributing to a greener agricultural area and to environmentally friendly agriculture. We’re literally living up to our name of trees for all. Or as the Frisians say, Beammen foar Elkenien! So what’s our goal? We aimed to plant 92,000 trees and shrubs in Friesland between 2022 and 2024. And the good news is we’ve exceeded this goal!

Enthusiastic participants

In 2022, the Friese Milieufederatie appealed to landowners in the province of Friesland, through the local newspapers, to take part in the project. It was soon clear that many inhabitants of Friesland were interested in greening their land and reinforcing biodiversity in Friesland. The applications poured in!

Along with the participants, Landschapsbeheer Friesland drew up customised planting plans. They looked at the planting location, the soil, the surrounding landscape and which species of tree and shrub occurred there naturally. The participants were also given instructions for how to plant the trees correctly and manage them.

The participants then planted the trees and shrubs themselves, in the form of landscape elements that suited their surroundings. They included avenues and rows of trees, windbreaks, hedges, copses and solitary trees. So the landscape elements have been placed around farmyards or on the borders of plots, spread all over the province of Friesland.

More than 73,000 trees and shrubs planted

In the previous planting season, the first 30,059 trees were planted at 39 different locations in Friesland. That was a great start! And we continued the good work in the second planting season, in the winter of 2023-2024. Last season, the participants planted no fewer than 73,092 trees and shrubs at 216 different locations, ranging from farmyards to care farms, and along avenues.

All the trees and shrubs planted by the participants are 100% native. They include rowan, willow, alder, hawthorn, blackthorn, viburnum, privet, maple, hazel, elm, birch, oak and dogwood. Exactly which species we plant differs for each location.

Corporate partners withstand the cold in Stroobos

One of the planting locations is a plot in Stroobos that previously had very little greenery. We planted 1,600 shrubs there around a meadow, helped by some of our corporate partners at the annual tree planting days. Hotels for Trees, the Hotelschool Leeuwarden and NHL Stenden Hospitality Group also rolled up their sleeves. It was quite a job for the participants in the cold winter weather!

Thanks to the participants’ hard work, two long hedgerows were planted: a privet hedge and a hawthorn hedge. Hedges of these species traditionally fit well in this landscape and they reinforce the local biodiversity.

How are the trees doing?

After the planting, all the participants report to the Friese Milieufederatie, in order to monitor progress and growth. Meanwhile, we can tell you that despite the wet spring, most of the planting has taken hold well. We’ve hardly lost any of the young plants. Here and there, trees and shrubs have been damaged slightly by deer, who enjoy gnawing on the saplings.

In July, we paid a field visit ourselves to two special locations where landscape elements have been planted: the care farms It Fallaet and De Ripen. Without the ‘Beammen foar Elkenien’ project, these farms wouldn’t have been able to afford the expense of trees and shrubs. The extra greenery was planted on the land along with the clients, or assistant farmers!

Assistant farmers green the pastureland close to Drachten

The It Fallaet care farm, close to Drachten, is home to 13 people with a disability. The participants work with the animals, grow vegetables in the greenhouse and work in the organic kitchen garden. They had just purchased a new pastureland when ‘Beammen foar Elkenien’ came along. So they had enough room for more trees and shrubs! Landschapsbeheer Friesland helped to plan the planting, so that the farm complements the green surroundings.

Under supervision, the assistant farmers planted no fewer than 2,800 trees and shrubs. The saplings were placed on a green embankment, in a food forest and as a hawthorn hedge. Thanks to the planting, the local biodiversity is stimulated and more water is retained on the land. And we’re seeing the benefits, as barn owls are regularly spotted. Maintaining the trees also provides useful work for the assistant farmers!

A great success!

Within two years, we’ve planted a total of 103,151 trees and shrubs at 255 locations spread all over Friesland. That means we’ve exceeded our goal of 92,000 trees by a long way! Furthermore, there was so much interest last year that dozens of would-be participants are still on the waiting list. So we hope to expand the project in the coming planting season and make the province even greener, so we can enjoy a more varied Frisian landscape in the future.

In the meantime, Trees for All will remain involved in monitoring the project for at least ten years. If you’d like to read more about the benefits of landscape elements and the value they add to our surroundings, take a look at our website.