Harrison Gardner

This is just a little warning that this episode contains some strong language, just in case there's small ears around.

Welcome to the Tools at Hand podcast.

My name is Harrison Gardner, and sitting across from me today is Matt Smith.

What's up?

Matt is the co-founder and CEO of HomeTree, a charity dedicated to restoring Ireland's native woodlands.

He's also a farmer, a sailor, a surfer, a published writer, and a longtime ambassador for ethical outdoor clothing company Finisterre.

His first job out of school was lifeguarding, and after that, spent seven or eight years at sea.

and then he came back to the land and started planting trees.

Hometree began in 2014 on a third of an acre with a few friends on a hilltop in West Clare, and today is running one of the most ambitious native woodland restoration projects in the country.

with a 12 million euro plan to restore 4,000 acres of temperate rainforest across eight different sites from Cork to Donegal by 2028 and 57,500 acres by 2035, costing 300 million euros.

Welcome to the show, Matt.

Thank you so much.

That was a mouthful.

That was huge.

yeah um we're going to talk a lot about about home tree and about the ambitions of of home tree and reforesting ireland but it would be cool to learn a little a little bit more about you and how and how you became the ceo of home tree yeah it's interesting hearing an intro to yourself and just like you know the gaps that are missing and just you know they're so big and

What got you to a point that you now have this ambitious plan that's going to cost 300 million euros to deliver?

What do you mean by that?

You didn't decide your values?

Yeah, yeah.

I know, yeah, it's really interesting.