You’ve heard us talk about Nature+ before, but we don’t think we’ve shouted loudly enough about why it matters!

Across the UK, there are thousands of pockets of land with huge environmental potential. From riverbanks and fragmented habitats to unproductive land and underused corners of farms and estates, these spaces can play an important role in restoring nature, improving biodiversity and strengthening landscape resilience.

Yet many of these projects never happen.

Not because they lack environmental value, but because financial and practical barriers can prevent them from getting started. These projects may be too small to justify the costs associated with formal certification standards, or they may simply not be suited to the parameters of existing certification schemes.

That’s where Nature+ comes in.

Every pocket of land counts

Formal standards like the Woodland Carbon Code play a hugely important role in scaling woodland creation and building confidence in high-integrity carbon projects. But not every project can be designed around carbon credit generation, and not every land manager wants to enter the carbon market.

That doesn’t make those projects any less important.

In fact, in a fragmented landscape like the UK, smaller pockets of habitat can play a vital role in connecting ecosystems, supporting biodiversity, improving water quality, reducing flood risk and helping nature recover at a landscape scale. These projects can also help strengthen the long-term resilience of UK agriculture by improving soil health and water infiltration, mitigating soil loss and creating shelter amongst other benefits. When multiplied, these smaller projects will have landscape scale impacts.

Nature+ was created to support exactly these kinds of projects.

At Forest Carbon, creating a solution for these projects felt like a natural next step.

We supported nature-based solutions before the voluntary carbon market was fully established. This required confidence in the long-term value of woodland creation and environmental restoration. Nature+ follows that same principle: backing impactful projects because we understand their importance, even when conventional market mechanisms don’t yet fully support them.

Over the past two decades, Forest Carbon has helped shape the trajectory of the UK voluntary carbon market and support the development of impactful nature based solutions projects.

Find out more about our story here!

What is Nature+?

Nature+ works with trusted partners such as Tweed Forum and the Woodland Trust to provide a sponsorship model for high-impact UK nature restoration projects that sit outside the formal carbon and biodiversity markets.

These projects do not generate tradable carbon credits and are not certified under schemes such as the Woodland Carbon Code. However, they are carefully selected for the environmental and social co-benefits they are designed to deliver, alongside their unquantified carbon benefits, they support:

• habitat creation and restoration,
• biodiversity enhancement,
• Farm and landscape resilience,
• healthier waterways,
• natural flood management,
• improved soil health,
• green space and landscape connectivity,
• and stronger connections between people and nature.

We work directly with land managers and foresters to identify, finance and monitor projects that might otherwise struggle to get underway.

For many projects, the challenge is not ambition or ecological value, it is simply finding the confidence and early financial support needed to begin.

Nature+ helps provide that green light. 

Supporting projects that might otherwise never happen

Many landowners and foresters we speak to already have ideas for small-scale woodland and nature restoration projects. Often these are highly impactful, locally important schemes with genuine environmental benefits.

However, formal certification standards do not always make economic or practical sense for every project.

Some projects are too small in scale. Others are focused more heavily on biodiversity, riparian restoration or landscape enhancement than carbon outcomes alone. In many cases, the upfront costs and administrative burden of certification can outweigh the potential returns.

Without alternative support mechanisms, these projects risk remaining unrealised.

Nature+ exists to bridge that gap.

Funding is structured to support projects from the outset, helping land managers avoid carrying costs while waiting for support to materialise. This allows projects to move forward with confidence and gives sponsors a direct connection to tangible UK nature recovery.

Based on our internal estimates, a well-funded Nature+ programme over the past year could have helped facilitate the planting of more than 53,000 additional UK trees - equivalent to approximately 48 hectares of new habitat.

Seeing valuable nature projects stall because funding is unavailable doesn’t sit right with us, and we suspect it won’t sit right with many businesses either.

The UK has limited space to restore nature, which means every hectare matters. Nature+ is our way of helping ensure impactful projects are not left behind simply because they fall outside conventional funding routes.

Nature+ is not about replacing carbon credits

Carbon credits remain an important and necessary tool in the transition to a lower-carbon economy.

But carbon is not the only measure of environmental value.

Nature+ gives organisations an opportunity to support credible UK nature recovery projects alongside wider climate strategies, helping deliver benefits that extend beyond carbon alone.

For some organisations, Nature+ may complement an existing verified carbon credit portfolio. For others, it may provide a more accessible way to begin supporting environmental action closer to home.

Importantly, because Nature+ projects are not certified carbon projects, supporters cannot make carbon neutrality or offsetting claims linked to their sponsorship. Instead, organisations can communicate their direct support for UK nature restoration, biodiversity enhancement and landscape recovery.

Bringing Nature+ to life: Wychwood, Scottish Borders

Located near Broughton in the Scottish Borders, Wychwood is a native broadleaf woodland designed to deliver wide-reaching environmental benefits.

Planted within the floodplain of the upper River Tweed, the project is restoring degraded grazing land into a thriving riparian habitat - one of the most important habitats for supporting both land and aquatic wildlife.

As water moves through the landscape, newly planted trees help stabilise soil, slow water flow, and reduce diffuse pollution from nearby farmland. These changes improve water quality, reduce local flood risk and support the health of the River Tweed Special Area of Conservation downstream. Wychwood also enhances the popular Tweed Trail, bringing nature back into view for walkers, cyclists and the wider community.

Through Nature+, businesses and individuals are able to directly support impactful projects like Wychwood, creating a meaningful connection with both the landscape and the people who steward it.

“Sponsorship was really helpful. The grants alone wouldn’t have covered the costs. Nature+ turned it into a small but positive-return project, which meant it could go ahead. Returns aren’t what we’re in it for, but when you’re making changes at this scale, it’s reassuring to know you’re not going to make a loss.”

~ David Bentley, Wychwood landowner

Why businesses are supporting Nature+

If your organisation is looking to support UK nature through funding, there are several options available. Buying carbon through Woodland Carbon Code or Peatland Code projects is one route. However, not every organisation is specifically looking to purchase carbon credits. For many businesses, the priority is simpler: helping nature recovery projects happen.

Nature+ gives organisations the opportunity to directly support locally important nature projects and habitat restoration that would otherwise never have gone ahead.

While Nature+ doesn’t allow businesses to make net zero or carbon neutrality claims, it does allow organisations to communicate meaningful, tangible support for UK nature recovery. Supporters are able to:

• Communicate direct support for UK nature restoration projects and the environmental benefits they deliver.
• Share stories about specific projects they have helped fund, such as riparian woodland creation, biodiversity enhancement, natural flood management or habitat restoration.
• Demonstrate support for innovative nature projects that wouldn’t otherwise have gone ahead.

For example, a business supporting a Nature+ project could communicate:

“We have funded a 4ha riparian woodland in The Scottish Borders which is providing much-needed shade to freshwater pearl mussels and Atlantic salmon populations, and helping local communities by mitigating the effects of flooding.”

Nature+ as part of a broader sustainability strategy

Nature+ can also form part of a wider sustainability and climate strategy, sitting alongside verified carbon credits and longer-term carbon removal projects.

For some organisations, Nature+ provides a way to support highly local, visible environmental action alongside broader global carbon commitments.

Space Group adopted Nature+ as part of a broader blended climate and nature strategy:

“At Space Group, we use Science Based Targets to measure our carbon emissions and identified a need to offset 20 tonnes of CO₂. From the outset, supporting a balanced portfolio and combining verified offsets, future-focused projects, and a community initiative that would benefit the Northeast region was important.

Working with Forest Carbon, we created this mix. We offset 20 tonnes through retired CO₂e credits in the Nii Kaniti Forest, Peru. Looking to the future, we invested in 20 tonnes of ex-ante credits at Lauder Common, Scotland. Closer to home, we supported the planting of 500 trees at Whitton Wood, England, contributing to the local environment and community, and we plan to continue supporting Nature+ projects on an ongoing annual basis.

Carbon credits can feel complex, but Forest Carbon made the process straightforward. Their guidance gave us confidence in our choices and helped us achieve a positive impact across global, national, and regional levels.”

~ Rob Charlton, Space Group

The result of this diversified approach supports immediate carbon action with long-term UK nature recovery and local impact.

The importance of connection and locality

For many Nature+ supporters, connection to place is an important part of the story.

Design Conformity chose to support Croft 4 Fanmore on the Isle of Mull because of both the project’s environmental value and its personal connection to the area.

"We chose Nature+ because we wanted a connection to a reforestation project and my extended family live close to the Isle of Mull.

Also, the team at Forest Carbon are genuinely passionate and incredibly experienced, and that meant a lot because we’re not doing it for credits, we’re doing it because we’re passionate too. We reinvest knowledge and we reinvest in nature, it’s even reflected in our dc company logo."

~ Adam Hamilton-Fletcher, Design Conformity

Why Nature+ matters

Nature recovery cannot rely solely on large-scale certified projects.

Some of the most valuable environmental improvements happen in the smaller spaces between them - the river corridors, shelterbelts, native woodland pockets and habitat links that help landscapes function as connected ecosystems.

These projects matter. They matter for biodiversity. They matter for water. They matter for communities. And collectively, they matter enormously for the future resilience of the UK’s natural environment.

Nature+ exists to help make those projects possible.

Because every pocket of nature counts.

Want to support Nature+?

Explore our available Nature+ projects and discover how your organisation can help bring locally important UK nature restoration projects to life. Sponsor Nature+

This article was originally published on Forest Carbon in May 2026.