Using a literature review extracted data from 26 published papers which had data on individual tree defoliation and growth relationships In Europe. This data set includes 415 defoliation-growth data points from 16 different tree species covering 15+ countries in Europe. Growth metrics used in individual papers were different, and included increments in terms of volume, tree rings width, radial growth, basal area and biomass. All growth metrics were converted into relative growth (presented in this dataset), expressed as a percentage of the growth of progressively defoliated trees in relation to the growth of those trees adopted as reference (control) defoliation level (i.e. the growth of the lowest defoliation level in each study was used as the reference growth point).