What made you become a member of RSFS?
When I started working as Policy Researcher at Confor, I was hungry for all the information I could find about forestry and joined various organisations. I enjoyed the magazine for a long time, but didn’t have the opportunity to attend events until recently. The Annual Study Tour in Deeside in 2025, in glorious sunshine, gave me the bug. Once I became a familiar face at field days, Virginia and Ellinor quickly recruited me to the Edinburgh & Lothians Committee.
Where did your interest in forestry begin?
In 2009 a singing friend invited me to meet another singing friend, who brought a plus-one, who looked nonplussed during our discussion of sacred music. To be polite, I asked him what he did, and he said, ‘I’m a forester’ — not an answer I’d ever heard before. I gave the classic response: ‘Do you work for the Forestry Commission?’ No: he worked for a private forestry company, Tilhill. I had no idea that the forests I loved exploring had a whole industry looking after them. We began hillwalking together, and he explained what we were seeing: the species, the age of the trees and of the forests, the restructuring under UKFS, the breakout, mills and supply chain. I was fascinated. It was Andrew Heald, who went on to found the global forest restoration company iNovaland, and who has been an invaluable mentor and collaborator ever since.
What’s your involvement with forestry now?
After five years as the Natural Capital developer for Galbraith, I am now working independently and seeking to bring my natural capital expertise back into wider work for the forestry and the wood supply chain. I am also trying to make more use of my creative skills for forestry advocacy: promoting my novel Herryea Forest, a children's adventure story set in a working forest, and using live-sketching and illustration to help bring people and trees together.
Where is a great place in Scotland that not everyone knows about?
Underneath Fairlie Pier, off the North Ayrshire coast. I go scuba diving there almost every week with fellow RSFS member Simon Stuart. We find octopus, cat-sharks, innumerable fish, sea stars, nudibranch and crustaceans ... There is a wonderful diving centre on top of the pier. Don't tell anyone, they will all want to come.
Do you have a favourite tree and why?
It's a tree with several afterlives. One of my first great forester friends was the then Confor Wales manager, Martin Bishop, a deeply wise timber man who taught me a huge amount about both forestry and humanity. A few days before he died in a gliding accident, he turned a beautiful burr elm bowl for me: a physical reminder of the wisdom I inherited from him. I wonder where and when that characterful old elm was planted, long before either of us were born, and what it saw in its lifetime.
Can you give us a book, film, TV show or podcast recommendation? It doesn’t have to be forestry related!
I am loving the podcast Empire by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand. I think I've learned more listening to this than from my Cambridge history degree or PhD. Less high-brow, Tour de France Highlights are the best box-set on TV: and that is forestry-related because it was a former director of Euroforest who put me onto them.
What do you think is an important issue in forestry today?
The gulf between the passion for natural ecosystems and depth of wisdom in the forestry industry, and the vague and often negative perception of forestry and foresters in wider society.
Outside of forestry, what is a hobby or activity you enjoy?
I don't draw a distinction between work and hobbies: I have passions, and out of them I have to somehow make a living. As I grow older I realise the world has an infinite supply of new wonders to be the subject of curiosity, creativity, and even spiritual adventure, and each new thing enhances the rest. Whether it's forestry, Edinburgh regency history, Scottish marine life, manuscript illumination, sacred choral music, Plum Village Buddhism, the works of John Ruskin, or whatever I will discover next, they all connect, and provide the opportunity for a life that is both rich and impactful.
What was your first job?
Lay Pastoral Assistant in St James Church, Goldenacre. Memorable for being my first email inbox, for the stunning wall paintings which you should see on an open-doors day if you can; and for the organist who undermined my high-minded spiritual ideas when she introduced me to the joys of Deuchars in the Jolly Judge.
What do you love most about forests or forestry?
I came to forestry in my mid-30s for the magic of an industry that can create economic value, jobs, carbon capture, and wildlife habitat, all at once. I stayed because of the people: I had never before had such a sense that I had found my tribe, and I have an ever-widening circle of forestry friends, colleagues and collaborators.