Grow an equitable urban forest

24-06-2025

Think about who internally has the skills, qualities and relationships you need. Think about whose priorities naturally align with this type of work. Think about any external relationships or partnerships you could develop to help you get the most from Tree Equity Score. Think about who is contributing what and who could contribute resources in-kind. Crucially, think about how you will implement your plans (e.g. in low tree equity neighbourhoods with significant challenges).

Use the free Tree Equity Score tool to understand tree equity scores across your town or city.

Use the score to refine your plan:

• Categorise your neighbourhoods into high, medium and low priority
• Compile a case to demonstrate to elected officials or local authority leaders what’s happening at a ward, constituency or city level
• Look for patterns and try to identify causes (e.g. are areas heavily industrialised or earmarked for significant development?)
• Use data to tell the story of tree equity in your town or city. What is the range of tree canopy cover levels in different neighbourhoods? How does canopy cover compare to national averages?

• Use Tree Equity Score data to educate and engage interested organisations and community groups at an early stage. It’s a key step in producing a plan that people later buy into.

Speak to local authority and political leaders:

• Explain what the Tree Equity Score shows, why inequalities in tree cover are a problem and what can be done about it. It’s important to highlight why increasing tree equity will help them meet their priorities. For example, many towns and cities have declared climate emergencies and expanding tree cover could make a tangible difference.
• Read the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals if you’d like to dig deeper into shared goals for people and our planet.

Speak to communities:

• It’s important to involve people early at all stages of your planning, decision making and development to understand what’s important to them. Listen to communities about their local environment, their priorities and aspirations, and their experience of the trees in their neighbourhood.
• Share information on how tree cover in their neighbourhood compares to others nearby or even national averages. Explain why low tree cover is a risk, how it impacts our communities and what can be done about it on both an individual and wider neighbourhood and city scale.

Think about your local authority’s existing strategies and policies. Tree equity could either inform the development of tree establishment plans at a neighbourhood scale, guide a place-wide urban forest master plan or tree strategy, or be added into existing tree and urban forest strategies as an additional key aim. The Tree Council have produced guidance on producing tree and woodland strategies.

Things to think about:

How could you embed tree equity into existing strategies?

Could tree equity inform Local Nature Recovery Strategies?

Could you embed tree equity into local planning policy (e.g. Birmingham City Council consider canopy cover when assessing applications for new footway crossings and tree removals)?

How will you turn it from strategy into a delivery plan?

Here’s a case study to learn how Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council and Belfast City Council integrated tree equity into their urban tree strategies and how it worked.

• A tree equity map divides an urban forest into priority neighbourhoods for long-term planning and resource allocation. The Tree Equity Score can help you easily identify the high priority neighbourhoods in a town or city. These are places where tree cover is sparsest and people’s need for the benefits of trees is greatest.
• To increase tree cover, managers will need to balance resource allocation between work across the whole urban forest and targeted regeneration in priority areas.
• Use the tree equity data to create a plan for establishing your urban forest long term:
• Identify which neighbourhoods are your priorities
• Plan how to increase tree equity in these areas
• Use a cost modelling tool to estimate the costs of planting projects. You can download one here.
• Decide how much time and resources to allocate
• Set out a long-term delivery plan to address your priority neighbourhoods, ensuring the sustainability of the urban forest over generations

Here’s a case study to learn how Birmingham City Council and Birmingham Tree People used their Tree Equity Score to inform where they work and how they use their time.

As soon as you know where your high priority areas are and what order you want to approach them, it’s time to talk to the people who live there, find out their views on trees and discuss where there are opportunities to plant more. Talking to people now ensures they are involved and benefit from the process.

Build on the tree equity story you’ve begun and help people understand it’s more than just planting. People may have planting locations or designs in mind, or you can use ‘Identify potential planting locations’ to help create options for them to choose from.

Whatever your engagement approach, here are some key actions to keep in mind:

• Involve people as early as possible
• Understand where you can add value
• Give your time freely
• Gain opinions before making decisions
• Be clear how much authority communities have
• Be clear what any co-design boundaries are
• Agree shared goals
• Encourage practical and creative involvement with clear short-term and long-term benefits
• Help third sector organisations use the Tree Equity Score (going on to influence councillors and build it into their own work)

Your partnerships with residents will continue to grow as you move through each step. This is key to keeping people engaged in the process long term.

At this stage it could be helpful to establish a planting target. Treeconomics and the Woodland Trust have created a tree equity planting target calculator that can help you to set goals for increasing tree cover on a neighbourhood scale. This enables you to set and adjust % canopy cover targets and the numbers of small/medium/large trees required to reach these. Use it to create a realistic target for the number of trees needed to increase tree equity in each neighbourhood.

You can then move on to identifying potential planting locations. You may have already discovered that some people have strong ideas about where they want to plant trees. Others may need a little more guidance. Either way, it can be helpful to create a shortlist of locations that are both realistic and represent people’s priorities.

Things to consider when creating your shortlist:

• Give people some starter options to prompt people to think where new trees could be accommodated around the neighbourhood
• Find out who owns the land where you’re proposing to plant
• Consider if any underground utilities would prevent you from planting a tree
• Identify any nearby buildings that you should avoid planting close to
• Avoid any priority habitats – like species-rich grassland – that would be negatively impacted by tree planting
• Take inspiration from Treeconomics’ tree planting opportunity mapping methodology
• Ground truth your locations – taking people on a tree walk to look at existing trees and new locations is both engaging and a good way to plan

Keeping your communities engaged beyond planting – into the establishing and maintaining stages – will give trees the best chance of reaching maturity and delivering maximum benefits.

The Trees and Design Action Group’s guide, How to Plant Large Trees is an accessible guide to planting large trees in public spaces. It will help you empower other groups interested in planting trees, providing the information they need to establish healthy trees in towns and cities.

Woodland Trust’s Tree Equity Score will be updated annually, so as your trees grow in the long term you should be able to track the change to canopy cover over time.

Tree equity is a great way to share a story about your progress. Spread the word about the improvements you’ve made, where neighbourhoods started out and how far they’ve come on their green journey.

Tree equity is as much about people as it is about trees. Remember to tell the human stories as well. Who was involved, how did they make a difference and what does tree equity mean to them?

Watch this video to hear first-hand stories of how the work of Birmingham Tree People has benefited people in the community.