#GoodNews: Bengaluru NGO Uses Technique to Grow Forest in 8 Months

The organisation has planted 2,000 saplings in 600 square feet of land using the Japanese Miyawaki technique.

Eight months ago, if you had gone to the Deisel Loco Shed in KR Puram, Bengaluru, all you would have seen was barren land – dull, brown and rocky – with hardly a plant in sight. But if you were to go there today, you wouldn’t believe your eyes. With lush greenery, butterflies fluttering from one plant to another and melodious birdsong – it has all the makings of a thriving forest.

Take a look at this video to get a glimpse of the new-grown forest:

It’s hard to believe that it only took a few months to grow this baby forest. But that’s what this initiative by SayTrees Environment Trust, a Bengaluru-based green NGO, has done.

The organisation planted 2,000 saplings in 600 square feet of land using the Japanese Miyawaki technique. The technique helps the equivalent of a century-old forest to grow in a decade.

And now, seeing the results of the eight-month-old forest at KR Puram, Durgesh Agrahari, Head of Partnerships and Projects at SayTrees, tells TNM that they plan to grow two more such forests in Yeshwantpur and near Electronic City respectively.

SayTrees took up the KR Puram project in consultation with Bengaluru-based organisation Afforestt. Afforestt’s founder, Shubhendu Sharma, trained under Akira Miyawaki in 2008 and learnt the eponymous technique.

Shubhendu was working as an engineer in Toyota at the time when Miyawaki visited them to plant a forest near their factory. After training under Miyawaki, Shubhendu planted a mini forest in his own backyard. In 2011, he decided to take it up full-time with Afforestt.

When TNM spoke to Shubhendu in 2015, he had just been awarded the Namma Bengaluru award in the Citizen Youth Category. He had planted 48 forests in 13 Indian cities then. Now, the number stands at 26 cities in India and eight abroad, with a total of 95 forests globally. Of these, Bengaluru has 13 forests, four stand in Hyderabad and another one is in the works in Chennai.

(This story was originally published on The News Minute. It has been edited for length.)