Got this in an email from Shree Padre, since the trees include jackfruit I'm assuming it isn't OT:
http://www.civilsocietyonline.com/pages/Details.aspx?212 Shree Padre, Kasargod (Kerala)
Two decades ago nobody wasted their time planting trees in Perla, a small town near the Kerala-Karnataka border. Coaxing a new plant to grow here was impossible. This rocky land was so barren that if a stray dog strolled around you could see it at a distance from all four sides. The town sat on a hard bed of black top laterite soil, condemned as infertile.
Yet 15 years later a miracle has occurred. Sixteen acres of this same stubborn land are now covered with an impressive forest. A local high school has accomplished this feat with persistence and devotion. On about four acres a canopy of trees and plants protect the ground from the merciless sun, providing humidity for smaller grasses and plants to grow.
“We began in 1998 by starting a Nature Club. It was inaugurated by the late environmentalist Shampa Daitota,” recalls Shivakumar, headmaster of Sathyanarayana High School (SNHS) in Perla. “Every monsoon we used to bring hundreds of saplings and plant them here. Without fail, they would all die.” Faced with such a high failure rate the school began to wonder if their dream of growing a forest was really just a chimera.
They changed their strategy. The school began to plant bigger two-year-old plants from nurseries belonging to Karnataka’s forest department. A few of these survived. At this time six teachers of the school were all going to retire. Younger teachers requested them to sponsor a plant each for Rs 300. The money was used to build enclosures for the new plants so that goats wandering around wouldn’t chew them up.
Local people laughed at the school’s efforts. How can you expect plants to grow on hard laterite where no soil exists, they mocked.
“When school used to reopen after the weekend break, we would helplessly see that many of our new plants had been uprooted,” recalls a teacher. Then, there was the goat menace. If some plants sprouted, neighbours would cut them for green manure when the school was closed. The school’s pleas to residents to kindly let the plants grow fell on deaf ears.
The school’s Nature Club managed to raise some money from a few sympathetic local people to buy new plants. This time they made cylindrical enclosures from chicken mesh to protect them. But these, too, would vanish when school closed for the weekend. Thieves would steal the mesh to sell as scrap.
The teachers put their heads together and came up with an idea. They decided to protect the plants with plastic bags coated with white cement. This worked. Nobody was interested in picking up used plastic bags. The plants were finally safe.
Every class was assigned a patch of land to raise vegetation. During the monsoon the students, who are mostly from farming families, brought a few plants from their own farms and planted it here.
None of the teachers is a forestry specialist. But they have gained a lot of wisdom on how to raise a forest on hard laterite land. “If you observe the ground closely, you will notice fissures on the surface. These fissures have soil in them that can support plants. So we planted mostly on these fissures,” explains Govinda Joshi, a teacher.
They also noticed a few natural pits and depressions where planting could be done. “These have a very thin layer of soil. But plants can survive here,” says Umesh, a teacher and former convener of the Nature Club. Umesh says he has forgotten the endless number of times he brought cuttings of gliricidia all the way from his homestead by hiring an auto rickshaw. Gliricidia, locally called eetina gida (manure plant) is known to survive in such conditions.
Once one group of plants survives, they form an undercover of grass and small herbs beneath. When dry leaves begin to fall, the soil forming on the ground becomes rich in nutrients.
Teachers and students realized this was the turning point. They could now raise plants of higher utility. They planted mango, cashew and trees in the natural shelter created by the smaller group of plants.
“The initial growth of these tree species was very, very slow,” recalls one of the teachers. “But, after four to five years the trees began growing rapidly. May be the initial slowness was because the tree’s taproot had to penetrate the hard soil to reach the softer sub-soil underneath.”
Two jackfruit trees have grown big. Last year, one jackfruit tree yielded fruits for the first time. A few other tree species have also come up nicely.
Two years ago, the school invited Venkatrama Daitota, a well-known herbalist, to come and see their young forest. He identified about 150 plant species here. That number has probably increased to 500 species by now. “Even if we don’t plant anything, this vegetation will remain and spread out,” says Umesh, full of hope.
One bonus of so many years of hard work is a surfeit of water. Every year towards the end of summer, water in the school’s open well would touch rock bottom. The school couldn’t extract even a pail of water.
Last year they pumped out water from the well to construct a building. “Even in late summer despite continuous pumping, the well did not dry up,” recalls Shivakumar.
No study has been done to find out how much groundwater levels have risen. At the top of the hillock there is a school building. In 1996, a rainwater harvesting awareness programme hosted by the school had attracted hundreds of villagers. Inspired, the teachers with very little effort, diverted water falling on the roof of the building to natural pits. “And now we find open wells newly dug near the school yield good quality water,” says a local resident.
The new vegetation and the cool microclimate it has created has inspired the school to raise a vegetable garden. In the last two years students and teachers have grown a few vegetables during the monsoon. They earned `5,000 and used the money to fence some of the land. Dozens of amla plants have been planted. The school hopes to raise an ‘amla van’ or forest.
“I think over the years we must have planted at least 10,000 plants. Finally, around 10 per cent have survived. But looking back, it was all worth it,” says Keshava Prakash, a teacher.
The school now plans to expand its teenage forest to surrounding vacant land. There are two old banyan trees on the fringes of the new forest. Teachers are dreaming of making this space into an open classroom but they don’t have the funds to do it so far.
Contact: SN High School, Perla, (04998) 226 477
Email: 11035perla@gmail.com
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