sapgreen

Some years back, there stood a large tree in front of those shops. I don’t know what happened to that tree. What still exists is the circular concrete slot meant for the tree. Since the slot was anyway meant for a tree, I asked one of the shop owners about it. They directed me to the manager who in turn directed me to the building owner. And guess what the owner says.

“I will allow you to plant this tree if you cut down the tree on the other side of the shop. That tree is spreading its roots and is destroying my building. I don’t know whom to contact to get this cut. So, you cut the tree and I will allow you to plant any number of trees”.

Whom do I blame? The forest officials who have planted one with lateral spreading roots as an avenue tree? The building owner who thinks that he is doing a favor by allowing me to plant trees and hence I should do a favor to him by cutting the other one? Or the city’s local authorities who don’t even have trees on their agenda? One official even asked me to think of growing lawns instead of trees.

I feel like waging a losing battle. But I also know it is worth fighting for.

We are in the process of improving many of the small yet very important things at Sapgreen. As a result, the ‘tree gift’ cards we send have been completely given a fresh look and personal feel to it. The cards are now made from hand-made paper. Even the envelope is one of its kind. All designed by my sister and Applied-Art design student, Aashitha.

Today, we have procured 250 very large saplings with one aim. A greener Earth.
First of all, about the saplings. These are approximately 10 feet in height and of various varieties. Indian Tulip, Rain tree, Mahagony, Wild Almond, CannonBall tree, Maulsari, Saptaparni, Kassod, Indian Almond, Neem, Champak, Bhadrakshi, Rudrakshi, Bilvapatra, Soapnut, Kadamba, Weeping fig, Dhalichandra and Bauhinia. Owing to their height, we expect 100% survival of the saplings irrespective of where they are planted. So, we would not have to do the painful task of replacing failed saplings.
Secondly, where are we planting them? Watch out for these trees in and around Mysore in the next few days.

• More than 50 trees to be planted at prominent places of Mysore. All of these will be 10-12 foot saplings so as to prevent any damage from people/animals. More details on this in the next blog. The saplings though will reach Mysore next week.
• Saplings to be planted at school(s) to educate children about trees and make them associate themselves with trees. More details on this a few blogs later.
• Creating web pages for people of localities the city where in they can access information/news about their locality. For example, Gokulam will have a web page which will act as a one-stop info-center for its residents. Each web page will also have a “Green” Page which will address all environmental issues including trees. The page will be collaborative in the sense that members themselves will update info.
• An option to embed your photo in the tree-gift-card, an updated better version of the card itself, more information regarding trees on our website and beautification of the website.

The sapgreen blog has been silent for a few days now. There wasn’t much news happening to report here. Only regular planting of a few trees. I had an interaction with an interesting person, Arun who planted 12 trees in a vacant park in front of his home in Hebbal. He plans to slowly, over a period of years plant all over the park and other adjoining areas. Some day, this will be another ‘laughing waters‘ (A locality with hundreds of trees planted mostly with the single handed effort of Naveen Chimmanda). I will write detailed blogs on these admirable people some other day.

And then, we have environment day coming up on Jun 5th. We plan to plant many many trees if we get the required support. This is in participation with UNEP’s billion tree campaign. We are also planning various activities to promote the cause as well as promote sapgreen.com.
And regarding the trees planted on Ugadi, all except 8 are in good state. These 8 saplings need some explanation. 2 were neem, 4 are mayflower and 2 are spathodea. The neem were killed by some thoughtless people for the healing qualities of its leaves. Neem = the goose which laid golden eggs. The mayflower and spathodea most likely were broken at the top by children playing cricket. I have tried to put in some wisdom in the cricket boys’ heads. Have to wait and see if they get the point. The neem need to be replaced whereas mayflower and spathodea are still alive and are budding again. A lesson we have learnt is that trees less than 10 feet should never be planted in places frequented by humans.
The next post will have some details on our programs leading to June 5th.

It is the first major rain since Ugadi.

Home delivery by Sapgreen meant that we would send a laborer with the sapling to people who wanted to plant trees at their homes. The price was just Rs.125 since the owner of that house himself would maintain that tree after the planting was done. The services provided were that our laborer would transport the sapling to their home and then plant the sapling too. This we now feel does not fit well with our core model of planting trees at public spaces. The reasons:

• Transportation of saplings from one place to another all day takes a heavy toll on them.
• Transportation doesn’t look feasible when the saplings are to be planted at locations which are far-off from each other. For example, for planting just 2 saplings, we had to travel 10kms in one direction, then back and again 10kms in the opposite direction of the city. Totally, 40kms. We are not talking just about the economic feasibility here. Bicycling 40kms itself becomes so difficult for the laborer that planting the tree afterwards becomes an impossible task for him.
• The end result when time is used as a metric is too less. 2/3 trees in a day by one laborer is not worth the effort.

We plan to shelve this idea of home delivery since this doesn’t add much value addition anyway. We will now only be concentrating on our core plan of individual tree sponsors and companies who would be willing to plant trees in public spaces.