The landowner who hosts one of Scotland’s newest wind farms has made improvements to it’s Dalquhandy site through planting of thousands of trees.

Leading specialist property and regeneration firm Hargreaves Land, which owns the site upon which Dalquhandy Wind Farm, near Coalburn, is located, has completed work on the first phase to create new green spaces surrounding the facility, made up of a total of 126,400 trees.

The project, which was managed by forestry management consultancy Caledonian Rural on behalf of Hargreaves Land, was part of a much wider scheme to reafforest significant areas of the restored Dalquhandy surface mine to enhance public amenity, deliver commercial timber and to help achieve net zero targets by fixing and storing Co2. Various native species including the Common Alder, Downy Birch, Aspen and Hazel will take root alongside Sitka Spruce and Scotland’s national tree, the Scots Pine.

Ross MacDonald, Senior Development Surveyor at Hargreaves Land said: “The area now boasts 84,700 conifers and 41,700 indigenous trees covering more than 60 hectares of land, creating wonderful new habitats to benefit local bio-diversity, whilst the various tracks and paths surrounding this restored surface coal mine can be enjoyed by residents of the local Douglas Valley communities for many generations to come.”

Owned by Greencoat, the Dalquhandy Wind Farm, which was completed in 2023 and is operated by BayWa r.e. Operation Services Limited, has an installed capacity of 42 Megawatts and comprises 10 turbines, which provide energy to power more than 27,000 homes.

Ross added: “We’d like to thank BayWa, Caledonian Rural, the tree supplier Trees Please, and David Mackie and his team at DMFCA, who completed the fencing and tree planting, in delivering this scheme.”

Hargreaves Land is the property and land division of Hargreaves Services plc, which employs more than 1,300 people and delivers key projects and services in the property, energy and infrastructure sectors.