We had a grant when I was in Cumbria. The grant was an amount per tree, it was up to the farmer how to spend it, but you needed to be able to prove that you bought at least that many trees, planted them, and looked after them.
We were given advice by the National Park ecologist. On the moorland they prefer that you don't fence, so the advice was to get the next stage up from whips and to plant them insanely densely in patches of at least 1/4 acre, with a lot of blackthorn especially around the outer edges. The cattle and deer will browse and there will be heavy losses - but the centre of the patches will get established. However, it had to be sheep-free moorland, otherwise the unfenced blackthorn would ensnare sheep and be dangerous.