Though we may be quite fond of the woods, it is not practical to go there on sight-seeing trips on a regular basis. We have to stay in towns and cities to earn a living. If not, we should be employed with the Forest Department. So we work in the city and go ‘holidaying’ in between. Trekking demands taking leave from office, staying away from work, and sometimes securing permission from the Forest Department. We have to make other arrangements as well. When all these hassles came in the way of my forest trips, I had an idea – why not buy a piece of land and plant a few trees there?
That would not be a real jungle but something close to it. After all, we cannot always go and stay in the forest. Darbhe, Kushe, Njangane – so goes a Sanskrit verse. It means that for conducting homa [holy fire ritual], if the regular darbha grass is unavailable, use kusha grass; if that’s not available either, use njangana, a creeper that grows in fields. So if we cannot trek in a real forest, why not grow a woodland and stay there instead?
I was looking for a plot when I came across an inexpensive piece of land in Puliyarakonam, 12 kms away from Thiruvananthapuram city. The reason for the low price was that the area was not easily accessible. The existing panchayat road was very steep. JCB was the only vehicle that could reach the plot. Also, the area did not have water supply. But it had a pond, which was why I bought the property. Immediately, I got it cleaned. Till then, the pores on its rock walls had been choked with mud, slime and fallen leaves gathered over the years. That was why water had collected there. The cleaning operation unclogged the gaps, and water drained through them. I tried many irrigation methods to grow trees. But none were successful.
First, I sought the help on my neighbour – Raghunathan Nadar, the first occupant in the area – and drew water from his well to create a supply system in my plot. Water was pumped to a height of 300 feet, stored in two tanks and drawn from there. I tried putting up additional tanks. Nothing worked. I bought some land at the lower level hoping to find groundwater. Using money from the sale of ancestral property I purchased a new plot, and dug wells but none yielded water. One of them had some water, but not enough. I even tried drilling a bore well. No luck there either. Arrangements to recharge the ground water table also gave little results.
All this was aimed at growing trees using the available water. Every year I purchased around 500 saplings and planted them in different parts of the plot after making all preparations. All the saplings would sprout – because I planted them in the rainy season – and grew for a year or a year-and-a-half. Once in two years there is a dry spell all over Kerala. The phenomenon is hardly noticed in other parts of the land but on hill tops, it is perceivable. As a result, all my trees would dry out, barring one or two, or at times, ten. Twelve-foot-tall Chempaka trees in full bloom have perished thus. The sight was saddening but nothing could be done about it.
During one such dry spell when I was wondering what to do, I heard about the Miyawaki method of afforestation. My nephew, Krishnaprasad, sent me a video clip on Whatsapp but somehow I missed seeing it. After that, Bobby Mohan – a friend of mine who had come with me to Puliyarakonam on several occasions, seen me plant trees and shared my interest in it – told me one day, “It seems a forest has been grown by someone in three cents of land. Why don’t you give it a shot?” When I related this to my nephew, he turned livid and asked, “Wasn’t that the video I sent you? How come you haven’t seen it yet, uncle?!”
I requested him to send it again and he did. It was a TED Talk by Shubhendu Sharma. Until then, it was my friend Jayakumar, a plumber, who had made arrangements for water supply in my plot. But even with his labyrinth of pipes, we were unable to grow trees. What I understood from Shubhendu Sharma’s talk on Miyawaki method was that instead of distributing water all over the area, we could focus on two or three cents of land and cultivate a mini-forest there. A three cent forest would grow fast and become huge in three years.
I talked to the overseer of my cultivation, Madhu, about this and made the primary arrangements. We brought many saplings, including wild ones. I didn’t know much about wild trees back then. Dr Mathew Dan, a scientist in T.B.G.R.I., advised me about forest trees. Another friend, Cherian Mathew, a farm journalist, brought saplings from several places, including Unna [silk cotton tree] and Othalam [suicide tree] that were unavailable here.
A foundation presided by Professor Prof. V. K. Damodaran, called Nature’s Green Guardian Foundation, was also interested in our work. All of us together started this programme of tree plantation at Puliyarakonam. My colleagues also helped us. Our first attempt was on a three cent piece of land. Within the first three months itself, the forest grew far more vigorously than we expected. After planting the first forest, we made preparations for a year-and-a-half before making the next attempt. This forest is one-and-a-half years old, and the older one three years. In the past 18 months, the trees grew 18 feet on an average. Many like Rambutan and Star Fruit trees have borne fruits as well. A few climber plants have also started flowering. This convinced us that trees grow fast if we follow the Miyawaki method. That is how we decided to spread awareness about this model.