Green Infrastructure (GI) has been predominately researched as an urban concept. However, it can be argued that its principles of promoting connected networks of green and blue spaces to support multi-functional landscapes has significant value in rural as well as urban locations. Rural GI is under researched with limited consideration within the wider discussion of environmental praxis. Other activities, i.e., agriculture, forestry and conservation, dominate management discourses in rural environmental thinking limiting opportunities for a more holistic approach to GI thinking to be tested in these places. Moreover, land use in rural areas, especially at the landscape scale, is subject to complex ownership and management issues. Changes in legislation focussed on “nature” recovery and landscape functionality further complicate these debates. There is though a growing recognition within both traditional rural land and in contemporary ecological advocacy that the restoration of nature can be politically, socio-economically, and environmentally positive.

To examine this process the requires an unpacking of the visible changes in rural land use policy to refocus debates from a GI perspective. Such an approach offers insights into how the principles of GI can be used to address climate change, biodiversity, food security, and changing rural livelihoods on current land use. By arguing that the focus of policy on nature positive planning with designations and policy initiatives promotes the use of GI it remains uncertain whether this translates into resilient landscape scale land management. The outcomes of this discussion illustrate that GI in rural contexts constitutes a distinctly different approach to those applied in urban areas, and is characterised by landscape-scale management issues and reflections of existing livelihood practices. Positive uses of GI is supported through dynamic institutional arrangements, diverse governance options, and local socio-economic conditions. Thus, by reflecting on the governance of GI in rural areas it provides scope to move beyond static assessments of functionality towards an understanding of the institutional environments and local social structures within which GI is embedded.