Glenlude partnership nominated for Nature of Scotland Award 2025

Our inspiring nature recovery partnership with Phoenix Futures at Glenlude has been shortlisted for a Nature of Scotland Health and Wellbeing Award.

We are delighted to hear that our partners Phoenix Futures and our Glenlude team have been shortlisted for a 2025 Nature of Scotland Health and Wellbeing Award.

For the past 13 years, participants in the Phoenix Futures Recovery through Nature project have been growing the ‘Phoenix Forest’ at Glenlude to celebrate achievements in the organisation, helping people and wildlife recover.

The project also contributes to our nature recovery plans for Glenlude, helping to create a mosaic of habitats across the site, where we are gradually replacing an old conifer plantation with native broadleaf trees. The trees we plant come from locally collected seed and grown in Glenlude’s tree nursery.

Glenlude Manager Karen Purvis explained how the partnership works: “Each year, we welcome Phoenix volunteers from the organisation’s drug and alcohol support services across England and Scotland at our site in the Scottish Borders. We show them how to plant and maintain young trees, monitor plant and animal life, and how to weave felled conifers into robust brash hedges to protect tree seedlings from roe deer browsing.”

The Phoenix Forest sits between two key areas of woodland regeneration, linking them to create native woodland covering over 22 hectares. The staggered pace of planting has created a multi-layered woodland, richer in biodiversity than a single aged woodland. Trees planted in the early days are now producing seed. This has kick-started natural ecological processes, enabling the woodland to become self-sustaining.

Karen is delighted that the team has been shortlisted for the Health and Wellbeing Award: “We have always been immensely proud of our joint project, the benefits to people and nature, and of all that has been achieved at Phoenix Forest over the past 13 years.

“What was initially a stark, bare hillside is now a thriving young woodland that is producing seed, taking on a shape of its own and becoming increasingly biodiverse. This would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the Phoenix family.”

Jon Hall, Commissioning and Development Manager, Recovery Through Nature, Phoenix Futures, said: “The enduring partnership between the John Muir Trust and Phoenix Futures gives us the opportunity to bring Phoenix people together for a wonderful day and celebrate recovery in truly beautiful surroundings, whilst making a genuine impact on the conservation of an important wild place and its habitat.

“The process of caring for Glenlude is as enriching for those who visit and volunteer as it is for the land.”

• The Nature of Scotland Awards shine a light on the great work being done to help Scotland’s species and habitats. This year's winners will be announced at an event in Edinburgh on Thursday 20 November 2025.