Growing Greenland's First Home-Sown Forest, Tree by Tree

Greenland Trees, a project of the Netherlands-registered Dasht Foundation active in Greenland since January 2019, partners with Greenlandic communities and schools to restore a heavily degraded former military base and other urbanized land in Narsaq, south Greenland. In 2021 the project built a greenhouse in Narsaq so native tree species no longer need to be imported from Iceland; in 2023 alone the team sowed 2,000 tree seeds in the greenhouse and planted 565 saplings of species including alder, spruce, pine and larch. Three groups of children from the Narsaq school take part in planting seeds, repotting seedlings and building a school Tiny Forest, while the project works with Utrecht University researchers to study which species thrive in Greenland's changing climate.