High ambitions to restore forests are recently being expressed by various parties. However, the number of environmental stressors on forests increases, impacting tree survival and performance in young forests, often causing failure. Both biotic and abiotic factors underlie these failures, but drought stands out as the most dominant cause. We hypothesise that the ecological stability of trees under drought in restored forests is determined by their environmental context and that droughtimpacts on the establishment and survival of young trees can be mitigated by applying context- and species-specific post-planting treatments. However, scientific evidence is still scarce. We aim to fill this knowledge-gap and achieve understanding of the ecological stability of restored forests subjected to drought. We will perform measurements on tree survival and performance in recently planted forests recorded on the unique tool bosteller.be. A subset will be subjected to a more detailed analysis to create deeper mechanistic insight in plantation failure. Next, we will perform experiments to determine the context-specific potential of selected post-planting treatments to mitigate drought-impacts on the ecological stability of young trees. Finally, we will integrate these outcomes into context- and species-specific restoration advice. This integrated approach will allow us to aid the design and implementation of the highly ambitious plans to restore large forest areas in Flanders and abroad.