Every year, millions of dollars are spent on tree-based restoration activities. Over the last few decades there are few success stories of such interventions and even those do not match the anticipated objectives for which the resources were spent. News articles announcing tree planting campaigns accomplishing millions of seedling plantings are not uncommon. Despite all these, in many countries vegetation cover has not improved proportional to the investment. The objective of this paper is to highlight the main underlying challenges that need to be tackled if restoration through tree-based interventions are to be successful. The key challenges are as follows. 1) Often tree planting is stated as a goal of an intervention,rather it should be tree growing. 2) Planning cycles of national governments which often implement such tree-based interventions are annual, hence have insufficient resources to support tree growing. 3) In many developing countries priorities shift every year. Environmental issues are of less priority in relation to other short-term pressing societal needs, limiting the funding for such activities. 4) Performance indicators are often number of trees planted or area planted, not number of trees grown, or area of land covered with grown trees. 5) Most projects operate on a short time frame (1-3 years) while many species (e.g. indigenous ones) need more than 3 years to sufficiently grow. 6) Even in most projects, despite having adequate project duration, emphasis on the after-planting management is limited. 7) There is very weak tree tenure to formally transfer the management of planted trees to local communities who reside in the landscapes over a long period of time. For investments in tree-based interventions to lead to anticipated results (i.e. restored green vegetation areas) the following measures are recommended: 1) Donors, government agencies and any other stakeholder engaged in tree-based interventions should realize that tree planting is a one-time event and tree growing is a process involving management of planted trees. Hence, project or interventions focusing on a one season activity of tree planting should not be promoted as it results in waste of resources. 2) Strategies to strengthen the ownership of the restoration efforts by local actors and communities should be strengthened. This helps communities to take over the management of the planted seedlings even if the projects were short-term. 3) If there is limited local capacity, donors should ensure a clear justification and strategy by the implementors exists to continue managing the planted trees. 4) Unless such strategies are in place, governments and donors should not approve any one-season tree planting activity. 5) Incentives for local communities to take up the management during and after planting should also be crafted. 6) Finally, the basis for restoration discourse should be tree growing, not tree planting.