Evergreen Exploring was founded by three mums who are qualified teachers and nature play specialists: Emily Paul, Natalie Bell & Rosie Hunter. They are passionate about inspiring parents, grandparents and carers to get outside with their children under five to play with nature. Evergreen Exploring provide materials to make it easy and fun for children to engage with nature; for children and their parents to connect and make memories together; and to record these moments in a meaningful way. Their materials can be found on www.evergreenexploring.org and to see their active online community visit @evergreenexploring on Facebook and Instagram.
Can you tell us a little about your background and your company?
Evergreen Exploring was founded in 2024. Having successfully led a local community park group for over five years we wanted to share our expertise in nature play with as many parents, grandparents and carers as possible. As qualified teachers, our sessions promoted personal growth, opportunities for discovery, creativity and connection. Having seen the benefit of this, not only with our own nine children but with the numerous families that had attended our group over the years, we knew that we had something special to offer.
What inspired you to start your business?
Witnessing the delight our own children experience as they explore and play with nature, inspired us to empower other parents, grandparents and carers; equipping them with the tools and confidence to feel the same. We know that those caring for young children, face growing pressure on their time and the ever present stress of creating meaningful childhood experiences. As teachers and nature play specialists we wanted to use our skills to turn their stress into joy.
What have been your biggest successes so far?
Coming off the blocks to launch our vision has been a whirlwind of building momentum and engagement. Establishing our online community in the autumn of 2024 and witnessing our first products in action: enabling children and carers from across the United Kingdom and beyond to experience a “Wild Advent” before leaping into 2025 with our curious “Welly Boot Explorers”. We recently featured on BBC Radio in North Yorkshire as part of Children’s Mental Health Week and in the Telegraph online, commenting on the pressure of juggling parenthood whilst working from home.
What challenges have you faced, and how did you overcome them?
Our biggest challenge was to take something that we had been doing in person in order to create materials for parents to use at home. In order to do this we had to create a structure that would allow us to present our materials in a user friendly way. We invested in a course that provided training and recommended solutions for website development and other online and marketing tools that we were likely to need such as emailing strategies. Our second challenge was how to create a sense of community. This was important to us as this was how our in person groups had grown. We established an online nature play group for those with under fives, offering free nature based inspiration and encouragement to get outside to play. Our third challenge was deciding the visual identity of our brand. Having volunteered and worked together for a number of years means we can be candid with each other and this was necessary to create a shared identity and vision for Evergreen Exploring. Overcoming these challenges has resulted in a website and an online presence that is coherent allowing us to confidently promote our high quality resources.
What are your plans for the future?
Our word for 2025 is Inspire and we are keeping this at the core of what we do. We believe that everyone should be able to play creatively with nature so we will continue to grow our online community offering inspiration and activities both on Facebook and on Instagram. We are blown away by the feedback we have received from our customers so we are launching a range of party packs including ‘Woodland’ and ‘Dinosaur’ themed party packs. Journaling with under fives is an important part of our resources so we are creating a nature play book and journal to treasure those moments and support screen free time. In addition, we are working with nurseries and childminders to develop our materials to support the Early Years curriculum. So we have plenty to keep us busy and to keep children connected to the outside!
What advice would you give to aspiring female entrepreneurs?
- Be bold, be true to your ideals and be resilient.
What are your top three tips for entrepreneurial success?
- Find your support network. As a three we support, inspire and cheer each other on. We are incredibly fortunate to have each other and recognise that our progress is made so much smoother by the fact we work together. If you are working on your own, reach out to your local council for mentorship opportunities as they have been very supportive too.
- Keep true to what inspires you and your goal. We created an ideal client called Holly and we always go back to whether our products and services match her needs.
- Take time to reflect. Making the time to create a strategy for the year, reviewing it half way and plotting key operational and financial milestones helps with accountability and focus.
- Celebrate all the wins, no matter how small.
Who are five people who inspire you the most, and why?
Simply our children, our family, our friends and each other.
We truly draw inspiration from each other and our community. Natalie is bold, practical and positive; Rosie is great at designs, correctly pitching ideas and diplomatic; Emily is driven, organised and has a great memory for all our ideas! Together we love bouncing ideas off each other, we keep each other on track, pick each other up when down and laugh when we make mistakes to learn from.
What are your favourite inspirational or motivational quotes?
For Emily:
“teach out not up with your under five” (unkown)
“if children are upset, take them outside or put them in water” (unkown)
For Natalie:
We go from beginning to beginning. Anon
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill
For Rosie:
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Where can our readers connect with you?
