Yishan Wong, who led Reddit from 2012 to 2014, has spent the last few years building Terraformation, a startup that restores native forests as a climate solution. This summer, the company began piloting a consumer product that sounds like a streaming plan with a shovel: pay $25 a month, and they’ll plant and tend a native sapling in Hawaiʻi as part of a biodiverse forest. Subscribers receive periodic photos and progress notes as trees take root on sites on the Big Island, including species such as hala and koa Tree planting by subscription, a new business from the former CEO of Reddit, Terraformation Subscriptions.

Wong argues the price reflects what it actually costs to grow forests that persist—nursery work, aftercare, survival monitoring, and staffing—not just the moment a seedling goes into the ground. That pitch contrasts with many low-cost “plant-a-tree” offers that experts say rarely cover years of maintenance. Restoration ecologist Karen Holl supports the idea that realistic budgets matter, cautioning that photos are nice but the public should also see data: biodiversity checks, satellite imagery, social impacts, and survival-to-maturity rates. “You might be able to plant a tree for a dollar, but you can’t grow a tree for a dollar,” she said, adding that transparency across the sector is still uneven Planting trees is no panacea for climate change, says ecologist, Tree planting by subscription, a new business from the former CEO of Reddit.

Terraformation, a for-profit venture with investors from the tech world, has mostly partnered with companies to date and is now courting individuals—and even tourism employers—to buy subscriptions in bulk as perks. The company says enterprise clients receive detailed reporting on biodiversity and tree survival, whereas individual subscribers get simpler updates to keep the experience intuitive Tree planting by subscription, a new business from the former CEO of Reddit, Reddit's former CEO wants you to buy a subscription for trees. Supporters say well-managed reforestation can store carbon and restore habitat; critics warn that trees are a “short-term carbon” pool vulnerable to fire, logging, or future die-off, and that offsets have often overpromised. Wong’s team frames the subscription not as a silver bullet but as a way to scale careful, native-species restoration—with a price tag that tries to match the real work of growing a forest Tree planting by subscription, a new business from the former CEO of Reddit, Terraformation | Native Biodiverse Reforestation.