This has sparked some discussions on how plausible it is.
As someone who’s worked and volunteered as a planter, doing all types of planting, I thought I’d break it down (and it’s not often experience as a planter helps talk about government policy). https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1200021445897674753

So, 2 billion trees sounds like a massive amount. How does it break down?
Firstly, tree planting doesn’t happen in the summer, so I’ll be generous and pretend we have 20 years of 100 day summers.

I know, don’t laugh.
I’m just giving the boomer gammons the best chance to pretend it’s unachievable.

So 2 billion in 20 years is 100 million per year.
That’s roughly 400,000 trees per day of planting season.
Sounds a lot, right?

Well, it’s not.
I worked for forestry Scotland, and we hit 2,000 trees out per person per day.
At that rate, you only need about 200-400 paid plantation-style tree planters per day to hit the target.
(New planters typically start at 1,000 trees per day).

What about equipment?
Well, in forestry commission planting you basically use a mattock (pick axe) and your fists.
Not even kidding, you break the ground and literally punch the trees in.
I think 400 mattocks is cheap enough.

What about pay?
Plantation planters got 6p per tree going up to around 7-8p per tree back in 2013.
Hence why you plant like hell to earn some cash.

The work involves jumping from one mound to another as fast as you can, and you’ll get about 3-4 trees a minute, with fairly good breaks (it’s generally up to you how much you work).

The ground prep involves getting a couple of diggers to scoop up mounds, dump them and move on (you plant in the mounds they scoop up). Doesn’t take long, doesn’t cost loads.

Of course, the number of planters becomes even less when you factor in non-plantation style planters and especially volunteer groups.

Volunteer groups usually hit 500-1500 trees per session, but when all the groups in the uk are counted it really adds up and takes down the number of plantation-style planters you’d need to hit the target.

Seriously, get involved with a local group. They have sessions going on all the time (except summer) and it’s good fun and you meet some great people doing it.

As for area to cover, we actually have lots and more becoming available all the time as land owners are giving up more and more land to woodland projects.
There’s also lots of inner city space that can be filled (though this is a different style of planting).

There’s also lots of land to reclaim from “grouse shooting land” - where the lack of trees is causing major flood problems for local residents (as happened in Hebden Bridge not long ago).

So we actually have the space. It just needs managing - and planting!

So, is this achievable?
In terms of work force needed, it’s laughably achievable.
In terms of equipment, it’s actually not that much at all.
In terms of pay, it’s again laughably achievable.
In terms of area, yes we have it and we can get it planted.

I do realise why many gammons think it’s not acheivable though, because those who’ve argued against it look like they’d struggle to plant one tree a day, and lack the ability to grasp how other people can plant 2,000 times faster than them