Children’s Forest site by Elmwood

Leeds consultancy Elmwood has created an educational website targeting 5-11-year-old children for Children’s Forest, a Millennium project for Yorkshire Trees of Time and Place.

The website launched last week as part of an initiative to plant thousands of trees on the land of lead sponsor Yorkshire Water.

A strong visual language was created by Elmwood instead of detailed scientific text, via a virtual tree which reacts to the amount of time visitors spend at the site. The longer they are there, the more the tree will grow, demanding food, water or sunlight. Games and competitions have been developed to encourage repeat visits.

Elmwood design director James Backhurst says: “Our research revealed that there was a huge gap in environmental websites, specifically for kids, that were fun and engaging as well as being educational.”

Yorkshire Water corporate affairs manager Simon Ingham adds: “It takes 15-20 years for a tree to grow and the website will act as the main platform to keep the project at the front of people’s minds in Yorkshire schools over the coming years.”