Blog by Scott McLear, Senior Digital Manager at Registers of Scotland.

As part of the 400^th anniversary celebrations, RoS is donating 400 hours to enable staff to volunteer in the local or wider community. 

The Staff Ideas Group from the 400 Anniversary project have been working hard to arrange volunteering and fundraising activities throughout 2017 for our people to be involved in, the first of which took place on Monday 3 April and involved helping to plant 400 trees.

As part of the Environmental Working Group, we thought it would be a good idea to plant trees for the 400 Anniversary.  It was great to be part of this activity, and to feel like we are contributing to the environment positively as a business. It was also great chatting with the Forestry Commission and discovering their roles, from speaking with communities before they start a community woodland, to how they manage the sites digitally to enable them to record the tree numbers, types and progress as the years go by.  We will hopefully get to revisit the site in the future to see the progress of the Hazel and Aspen trees we planted.

Carlene Henderson

The Keeper was in attendance with volunteers from across the business planting saplings at at Balcorrach Woods near Lennoxtown, in East Dunbartonshire.

The location was chosen by Forestry Commission Scotland to create new woodland to meet Scottish Government targets for offsetting carbon emissions and increasing woodland cover to 25% of the total land area.

The site will become a recreational resource for the local community as well as contributing to the biodiversity of the area. The trees being planted are native species.

Let’s hear from staff who attended on the day….

It was a very enjoyable and satisfying experience. We learned a lot from the forestry commission guys about the whole process of creating a forest and it was great to actually be part of that.

Alva Smollett