“From the bank of the Tweed to St Andrews I have never seen a single tree, which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present century. Now and then about a gentleman’s house stands a small plantation, which in Scots is called a policy, but of these there are few, and these few all very young. The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown. There is no tree for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger, and the whole country is extended in uniform nakedness…”

This bleak landscape was described by Samuel Johnson in the 18^th century in his “A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland” 1775 (p.8). At the end of the Ice Age, Scotland was largely covered with temperate forest, but a change to a cooler wetter climate and the effects of agriculture, as well as felling trees for timber, charcoal, etc. deforested much of the country. The same is true for the Orkney Islands. It is believed that most of the woodland in Orkney had been cut down by the end of the Bronze Age to clear land for farming. Grazing by animals and the strong winds for which Orkney is famous prevented regeneration.  By the medieval period, Orkney, and Scotland as a whole, were importing timber for building houses, ships, vehicles etc. from Norway.

In Orkney, a tiny patch of native woodland survives at Berriedale on the island of Hoy, together with a few even tinier scraps in the same part of that island, such as Burn of Quoy, mentioned in Stromness Museum's ‘Woodland Walks'. The main native trees in Orkney are Downy Birch; hazel; aspen; rowan; various willow species: Grey willow, Eared willow, Tea-leaved willow, Dwarf willow, Creeping willow and juniper. Wild rose and wild honeysuckle form part of the understorey.

There are a few small plantations of trees around the gentry houses (early modern onwards) in Orkney, perhaps what Johnson meant by a ‘policy’. They are usually sheltered by stone walls. These trees are mostly sycamores, a native of central, eastern and southern Europe, which is believed to have been introduced into Britain either by the Romans or during the Tudor period. Sycamore does well in Orkney because of its tolerance of the salt-laden winds. Although it’s a real nuisance if your garden is anywhere near a sycamore tree because it produces quantities of winged seeds that germinate vigorously anywhere they land.

Several small areas of conifers were planted by the Forestry Commission on Hoy in 1954, as part of a government program for re-afforestation of suitable areas. This program especially favoured species useful for timber, such as the fast-growing Sitka spruce. According to MTT Philips, one of the foresters who worked on the this project, there were four small plantations at Fea, Lodge, White Glen and Lyrawa. Looking at the OS map, there seems to be a fifth, at the extreme north end of the island, called Hoy Forest. The small plantations are mostly still standing,  although the only one I am able to get close to, at Fea, has suffered quite a lot of wind damage around the edges.

More recently, there have been more efforts to plant small areas of mixed trees in Orkney rather than coniferous plantations. Orkney Islands Council, various community projects, and a number of private individuals have done so. I visited a very good one during the Open Garden Festival this year, Laura’s Wood in South Ronaldsay. Several of my friends, who have large enough gardens, have raised quite successful mini-woods within a few decades, although they don't tend to use all-native species. Usually fast-growing willows are used as a windbreak to start them off. I understand that the tiny saplings may need to have wire netting collars to protect them from rabbits.

In urban areas of the Scottish mainland, ‘Tiny Forests’, or ‘Wee Forests’ as they are now called in Scotland, are being established using the Miyawaki method. Akira Miyawaki was a Japanese botanist and plant ecologist, who developed a method for growing very small areas of forest very rapidly. The Miyawaki method of creating tiny forests involves careful preparation of an area of soil, usually about the size of a tennis court, (approximately 24 x 11 metres) and then planting native species of trees from the normal canopy layer, lower storey and forest floor, all at the same time. The seeds are planted at very high densities. This is supposed to replicate what happens in a natural forest when a canopy tree falls and opens up a clearing. Competition for the light means that the saplings all grow very fast, competing for light, and natural selection thins out the forest. It apparently results in a tiny area of dense woodland, a native forest in miniature, and it only takes decades rather than centuries. It is very important to plant species which are native to the area – even within the UK, there are variations in habitat.

The small size (you can make them as small as 5m²) makes them suitable for small areas of waste ground in densely populated urban environments, where they have a noticeable effect on temperatures and air quality. The ‘tiny forests’ also provide opportunities for children and adult volunteers in big cities to learn about forests, while providing free labour for things like watering and weeding while the seedlings grow big enough to fend for themselves. And they attract sponsorship from businesses, who can use them for corporate away-days and bonding sessions and so on. An organisation called Earthwatch is co-ordinating the planting of many of these ‘wee forests’ in Scotland. There is one in our nearest large urban centre, Aberdeen, Woodside Wee Forest.

Lockdown generated a lot of social media advice about how important it is for our mental health to connect regularly with nature, how beneficial ‘forest bathing’ is and so on.  But it’s getting more and more difficult to find any forest to bathe in. This planet is grossly overpopulated. These tiny patches of woodland can never offer the silence and solitude of a real forest, nor the atmosphere which generated folk stories of witches and wolves and beautiful princesses sleeping for centuries in enchanted castles. You cannot be alone in the same way with the silence, the solitude, the sunlight filtering through the leaves of the tall trees far above, the rustling of small animals in the undergrowth. They do not seem to be places where you can just wander; you need a clipboard or an organised project. But perhaps they can cool down our mega-cities and give our grandchildren something to look at instead of concrete. Which can’t be bad.