How to Get Free/Affordable Trees

Before You Plant (or Donate)

Planting Failure

The majority of mass tree planting projects have been failures due to lack of proper planning, planting the wrong trees which couldn't survive in the area or planting all of one species which led to disease outbreak, as well as other failures like not ensuring community/land owner ownership of the trees nor 3rd party auditing to ensure survival.

What This Page Offers

On this page we explore some ways to boost tree-planting success, what to avoid, and follow up with a directory of free and cheap trees, or grants that can help you get trees without breaking the bank.

The programs listed on this page are often volunteer run and include programs that specifically focus on getting trees to people who want them and will actually care for them, instead of leaving their survival up to a mere fighting chance. Focus should be put on making sure an area is actually suitable for trees before planting but "Forest ecologists say creating space to allow nature to do its thing is usually a better approach to restoring forests than planting." With this in mind we suggest the following checklist to help improve the chance of tree survival plus links to pages about different rewilding options.

Checklist for Success

Seed Libraries 

If you are a more confident or adventurous person, you might also want to find out what it available at your local seed library. "There are now over 500 seed lending libraries open worldwide!"

Oceana

Trees for Planting by Location

The hope here was to provide free sources of native trees/saplings/shrubs, and some of these programs adhere to that. Others are programs you can support where buying trees gives others the opportunity to plant. The locations coincide with where the planting programs deliver the trees.

Warning: Some offer plants that don't seem to be native, so watch out and make sure you're not accidentally planting anything invasive.

Warning about Carbon Offset Projects

For the most part we have avoided adding carbon offsetting projects as much as possible, since these have (historically speaking) had extremely high failure rates with little to no monitoring or consequences for failing to meet their promises. There have also been problems including land grabs from indigenous communities, destroying existing ecosystems to replace them with failed "ghost forests" (sometimes replacing ecosystems like peatland which is actually better at sequestering carbon than forests are), or planting non-native/invasive monocrop forests.

When carbon offset projects have been included on this page, it's is because they seem to have focused on avoiding these key mistakes, by including local communities, or even using their projects to help improve the lives and biodiversity of the target regions they work in.

Grants on This Page

Some of these resources are grant applications for free trees, which appear to close seasonally for review, dispersal, then a renewed application season in time for Spring planting (this gives them time to acclimate to their new homes while we learn to take care of them, as well as time for the organizations to educate and gather funding for the next round of work). 

The listings that are currently closed were the ones that appeared most likely to be renewed, so please be patient and check back if they are not open on first viewing.

International

Africa

Cameroon

Central African Republic

Chad

Ethiopia

Ghana

Click A Tree: Trees for Entreepreneurs "Trees for Entreepreneurs Plant trees to help entrepreneurs build a better future for themselves."

The Gambia

Kenya Tree Programs

Malawi

Mali

Senegal

South Africa

Tanzania

Uganda

Zambia

Asia

India

Philippines

Thailand

Europe

UK

North America

Canada

Mexico

USA

Arizona

California

Idaho

Illionois

Iowa

Missouri

Oregon

South Carolina

Texas

Washington

Wisconsin

Oceana

Australia

Get Trees

NSW

New Zealand

South America

Argentina

Bolivia

Brazil

Chile

Ecuador

Peru

Maps

International

North America

USA