Back in 2024 while we were running our Treegeneration Local project in Aberystwyth, we placed an offer: "£40 to wildlife for first time customers". At first nothing happened, but after a while, we were contacted by a local business woman called Catherine Moyle, who was in the process of setting up a new forest school business in the area called nature ni (Welsh for "our nature").
She was really attracted by the offer, and used it to purchase our hosting services, paying £80 for the first year, with £40 of this being contributed to a local primary school, Ysgol Gymraeg Aberystwyth, to support their wildlife garden project. As a forest school practitioner the offer was perfectly in alignment with her business values and activities. For us, as a subscription service provider, we were more than happy to take a hit on the first year's hosting income, because most of our customers stay with us for a good number or years. Also the school was very happy of course, so it was a win-win-win situation :-)
Initially Catherine was just interested in our hosting services and planned to build a new Wordpress site herself. Setting up a new business is a demanding process though, so after a while, seeing that she had made no progress with this, we offered to build her a shiny new website using Drupal CMS, at an affordable price. She took up the offer, and so last year we built her a lovely duel language site, featuring a bespoke booking system for her forest school, foraging workshop, and bushcraft activities, all set within a beautiful, nature based theme. You can view her website at https://naturni.co.uk.
Word of mouth
The story does not end here though. Because she liked our "£40 to wildlife" offer so much she passed on our details to a client of hers, Pam Milner, who has a small, privately owned woodland called Coed Rhosmaen Crug, hidden away in a deeply rural location in Ceredigion, which she manages primarily for conservation purposes. Pam liked the offer as well, and used it to buy a year's hosting, but this time choosing to send the £40 contribution to a local organisation called Eco Hub Aber, specifically to support their Repair Cafe initiative.
Pam had recently been successful in acquiring a Woodland Investment Grant which she is using to provide enhanced conservation volunteering opportunities for local people, and commissioned us to build her a new website using part of the funding. The site was developed over 2025 and has gone live this week! It has a similar nature based style to natur ni, and is also duel language, utilising Drupal's built in core translation features. Amongst other things, it is a showcase for many of the beautiful photographs that Pam has taken within her woodland over the years. You can visit it at https://rhosmaencrug.uk .. we hope you like it!
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It's really unfortunate that we were unable to continue with the Treegeneration project, because this story shows that the model at it's core had potential, had we had the capacity to take it further. You can read more about the story of Treegeneration here.