12/03/2026
🌲 Something important is starting in the Angus Glens 🌲
For the past two years, we’ve been quietly working behind the scenes on something that has been in our hearts for much longer than that.
Today we’re finally ready to share it.
Fìor Forest Nursery.
Fìor is a Scottish Gaelic word meaning true, genuine, or authentic. That's the idea sits right at the heart of what we’re trying to build.
For us, it represents something simple:
trees grown from the place they belong, and opportunities rooted in the communities that live there.
Since the early days of The Alba Explorers, our work has been about helping people reconnect with the land around them. Over the years we’ve spent thousands of days outdoors with schools across Angus. Watching young people light their first fire, climb their first hill, plant their first tree, and discover the landscapes that make this part of Scotland so special.
Over time another question kept coming back to us:
What does the future actually look like for the future generation living in (particularly rural) Angus?
We keep hearing the same concerns: rural employers struggling to find skilled workers, land managers wondering where the next generation will come from, and young people who love the outdoors but can’t see a clear pathway into meaningful rural careers.
So that led us to think:
What if a tree nursery could also become a place where people find opportunity?
The answer to that question became Fìor Forest Nursery.
Based at Rottal Estate in Glen Clova, the nursery will grow native trees from local seed collected exclusively from the Angus and the Southeast Cairngorms, prioritising the conservation of remnant tree populations whose DNA is unique to our microclimates.
But more importantly, it will create opportunities for locals to learn, train, and build meaningful careers connected to the land.
For us, this project has never just been about trees.
Like everything we do, it's all about people.
Through The Alba Explorers Centre for Outdoor Innovation CIC, everything generated through the nursery will be reinvested into:
🌱 training young people in rural and environmental skills
🌱 creating pathways into land-based careers
🌱 networking Angus communities and fostering local pride
🌱 supporting community involvement in land stewardship
Across the Cairngorms National Park there are already fantastic initiatives happening — but here in the Angus Glens, investment has historically been much more limited.
We believe this part of the Park deserves the same energy and opportunity. Angus isn’t just somewhere we work.
We live here. Our children are growing up here. We want Angus to succeed.
Our directors, Jordan and Joshua, didn’t grow up here. We grew up in Dunfermline, Fife. We chose to move to Angus as adults because we could see something special. We fell in love with the landscapes, the glens, and the quiet beauty of this place, and we saw the opportunity for a good life that doesn't exist in other parts of the country. We fell in love with the people who live here, and the communities that feel authentic and cohesive.
And we believe Angus should be a place where young people can build their future — not somewhere starved of opportunity, a place they feel they have to leave.
Projects like this only happen because people and organisations believe in the idea and put their weight behind it.
We are incredibly grateful to, and humbled by the Cairngorms National Park Authority, who have awarded £100,000 towards startup costs through the Cairngorms 2030 programme, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund
We also couldn’t do this without Dee Ward of Rottal Estate, who has generously provided the nursery site and supported this vision for the Angus Glens from the very beginning.
For us, this moment feels like the start of something much bigger than a nursery. It’s about helping create a place where young people can see a future in rural Scotland again.
Over the coming months we’ll share more about our other partners, our team, and the projects we're involved in, as well as share updates how Fìor Forest Nursery grows - from seed collection in the hills, education and community involvement in the operations, to the first trees leaving the nursery and finding their new homes within Angus and the surrounding ountryside. We're beyond excited. We're motivated, raring to get stuck in and make a difference.
Fìor Forest Nursery
Pure Provenance. Grown in the Glens.
