Planting hazzles

Some years back, I asked the local corporator to join me in planting a tree. He came, planted the sapling himself, posed for the photos and left. A few days later, someone had vandalized the sapling and I planted another one in its place. The reason for the vandal was that a advertisement board had to be seen in place of the sapling. This time again it was vandalized. After the third one perished, I went to the corporator who had planted the tree. I came back with an indifferent advice from him, ‘Someone wants to make money by displaying his ad. Let him make money. Why do you bother about a tree?’.

So reads an excerpt from Ashwin's blog post. Thought his observations might interest the rest of us in the group

A wedding at a tree-loving family

At the wedding of his daughter in Mysore Mr K Pugglendi presented each of his guests with two fruit yielding tree saplings. Volunteers were seen asking the guests to plant them in their backyards.... Read more...

Tree-line plan for D Urs Rd.

In response to our ealier post Ashwin has come out with a brief note in his official website.
Ashwin writes: As of today, 14 trees exist on the kilometer long road. Just 14! I did a quick math to find out how many trees can be planted in all. Considering the intersecting roads, electric poles and a gap of at least 15 feet between adjacent saplings, 240 trees can be planted (both sides included)...To get a sense of his plan,and view the images Ashwin has in mind for Devaraja Urs Road, access Sapgreen.

Greening D Urs Rd.

I wonder at what stage is the Prasanna-Ashwin initiative to tree-line Mysore's Devaraja Urs Road. Ashwin Upadhyaya and Mr Prasanna have their commercial establishments on one of the city's oldest market areas. Their plan is to mobilise shopowners for planting suitable pavement trees that provide shade for shoppers and parked vehicles.
I don't know if the Prasanna-Ashwin initiative includes sidewalk-landscaping, such as this one in San Jose, California.Maybe there isn't much scope,considerng that pavements on D Urs Rd. are not wide enough.Or maybe they could try it out on the Coffee Day Kerbside,where we turn right, into JLB Road.

Meanwhile, I wish to share with Ashwin and Mr Prasanna some photos on the sidewalk planting done in San Ramon, Calif.

Leave behind your MEMORIES - Tree Plantation at Karur Public School

If we look back into our School Life today... we wonder if our teachers still remember us..? Some are remembered because they were extraordinary brilliants, some because they were very naughty and some only because they were good at something (singing, dancing, sports etc). Today when I go to my school they remember me because I was the most naughtiest and was always on the sports ground. It feels just GOOD... because they Remember..! :)

We at NISARGA, work a lot with schools as we do Nature & Outdoor based education programs all across Karnataka. On one of such program I met Santosh who is young and so passionate to give one of the best of the best education to his students. He owns 2 schools in Davangere and they are coming up with the new school campus at Karur both residential & day school. As we were on Summer Nature Camp at Kemmangundi one of the nights we were talking about doing planatation and landscaping at the new campus. That is when I suggested instead of going for ornamental and exotic trees if he would be interested to go for Native & Fruit bearing trees and also landscaping with more Butterfly host plants. The idea is to encourage and support the population of Birds & Butterflies inside the campus which in turn justifies all our efforts in introducing the Nature & Outdoor education Curriculum (activities like Workshop on Birds, Butterflies and also Biodiversity Study etc) for the students.

Nature Study while on Trek to Hebbe Falls

As the discussion went deeper n deeper, I recalled some of my readings of GVK promoting TREE planation to mark occassions at Family or Individual. Being one of GVK's admirer, right there an Idea popped into my mind and suggested Santosh if we can ask every student to plant a sapling as soon as he gets admission and take care of it untill he stays in the school. Santosh was very excited with this and immedeately said yes to it. So we have this thing take off with this years admissions and hopefully continuing for many years to come. For me I wonder if this can be one best way to "Leave behind your MEMORIES" at your school where you spend the most important era of your LIFE.

"Wish if more Schools can adopt this IDEA"

Anybody interested to know more about NISARGA Nature & Outdoor education activities please do contact me at naturelover009@gmail.com or call me at 99800 17105 / 99025 91345.

Greenery amidst concrete jungles

This huge sub-city in the capital is a 'modern' monstrosity. The USP of this sprawling residential locale called Dwarka includes - apartment blocks with ethnic names, wide roads, generous service lanes, crowded sector-wise malls, oh-so-hard water. But amidst all the concrete, we catch glimpses of green, occasionally yellow of the konna flowers (the Indian laburnum (Cassia fistula) flowers blossom in May here) and varietis of bougainvilla. Here's a Vishual treat. (The konna flowers are an integral part of the Vishukkani set up in Keralite households on the occasion of Vishu).

Chamarajanagar tree slaughter

The milestone on Sathy Road says Chamarajanagar is just 10 km away. From here we drove past scores of slaughtered trees all the way to the town. Amputated tree trunks on the roadside bore mute witness to an officially sanctioned havoc to green cover.
This stretch of the road close to Chamarajanagar town has apparantly been left untouched. Could it be because the timber contractor, working his way towards the town from the sixth milestone, has yet to make it here ? Whatever the reason it was refreshing to see a patch of road well shaded with roadside trees that are decades old.
If axe-men have their way, this shaded stretch may well become a memory.Giving way to a widened, if tree-less, stretch of road such this one.
Timber contractors are at work,sawing and axing freshly chopped trees into manageable pieces of firewood.
Logs on the wayside await transport to saw mills and carpentry shops.
You could do a 1000 words on the chopped tree in this picture.
But who needs words when the trunks can speak. Road-widening is cited as an explanation. What is often not so obvious is a minor fortune some people could stand to make by lobbying for widening roads rich with old avenue trees.
Telltale remains of a chopped tree on the left of the big one suggest that road-widening may well be a pretext for converting trees into high value timber. In many cases trees that got axed could have been saved, with marginal realignment of the stretch marked for widening. But then saving trees fetch no money. And these are sturdy old trees, on which there is much money to be made by bringing them under axe.