People plant, nurture 20k trees on 10 acre barren hill in Wardha

Nagpur: Once a dry barren hillock, the 10 acre ITI Hill in Wardha has turned into a ‘Speaking Oxygen Park’ and may be among the few such projects brought up with community participation.
The Nisarga Seva Samiti, Wardha, which has been into voluntary plantation in the city for the last three decades, accepted the ‘barren to green’ challenge to turn the hillock into a community woodland.
Madhukar Belkhode, president of the Samiti, said, “The project started in 2000 when the social forestry department ceased to take up the work claiming the hill was unsuitable for plantations and no trees would survive there, we jumped the bandwagon.”
Now, the park has nearly 20,000 trees.
To start with, volunteers took up soil and water conservation works on the hill and planted 800 trees. “Then district collector Milind Mhaiskar assured full support to green Wardha. Under the 33 crore greening drive, we also planted 15,000 trees and took up Miyawaki plantations too,” said Belkhode.
The barren hill spread in 10 acres has now turned into a green oasis and has been rechristened as ‘Speaking Oxygen Park’. Though funded by the district administration, the entire project has been accomplished by community participation.
A ‘Speaking tree app’ developed by assistant professor Sarang Dhote from Daryapur has information about 80 rare species, including medicinal plants, and components like tree library which focuses on tree conservation, Miyawaki solid forest and behada garden. Visitors can download the app from the Google Play Store by searching ‘Talking Oxy Park NSS’.
The unique feature of the hill park is that garden spaces have been named after Sant Tukdoji Maharaj, Shivaji Maharaj, green crusaders like Sunderlal Bahuguna, Maruti Chitampalli, waterman Rajendra Singh, FRA protagonists Devaji Tofa and Mohan Hirabai Hiralal, Kenyan social worker Wangarĩ Muta Maathai and Amrita Devi, who laid down her life to save trees etc.
Giving details about using the app, Dhote said, “Once you scan the QR code, you will come to know the work done by these great people and also about rare plants species. This app also works in Marathi, Hindi and English. Students can enhance their knowledge by knowing about these personalities.”
“At a time when cities are witnessing large-scale illegal tree felling, this may be perhaps among the few projects brought up with community participation in the region,” said Belkhode.
The Samiti also runs a project called ‘Dial a tree helpline’. “Under this project, members encourage people to plant trees on specific occasions like birthdays, marriage or death anniversaries, or any other memorable occasions. Not only this, such citizens are honoured with ‘Green citizen’ tag,” said Belkhode.