Plant tree for Rs 500, save Garden City

Plant tree for Rs 500, save Garden City
The Times of India

Bangalore: Plant a tree in your name for Rs 500: The government endorsed this offer by an NGO on Tuesday in an effort to ensure that the Garden City’s greenery remains in place for the next generation.

The programme, unveiled by NGO Parisara and additional chief secretary Vijay Gore, is as follows: Parisara and a committee set up by the government will plant seedlings in 300 acres belonging to the BWSSB near the Tippagundanahalli reservoir, and build it into a Spoorthi Vana (Garden of Inspiration).

The public can sponsor any number of individual trees for Rs 500 each. The tree will be named after the sponsor, who can not only plant it himself, but will have to spend ‘quality time’ with the tree.

“If the sponsor cannot do it himself, Parisara will plant the trees for them. We hope this movement and the fund-collection drive will be as big as the public effort for tsunami and earthquake relief,’’ Parisara representative Eshwar Prasad said.

The tree-planting is to be branded as a permanent memory of an occasion: The birth of a child, an anniversary, a marriage, even the death of a beloved relative. Each tree will be numbered and a certificate given to the sponsor.

“Pollution in Bangalore is gathering speed. This programme may not change that totally, but it will apply the breaks. Bangaloreans want to do something about it, this is the opportunity to do so,’’ Gore, who is among the first to contribute to the scheme, said. The programme also has celebrity endorsement: Jnanpith awardees U.R. Ananthamurthy, Girish Karnad, litterateurs K.P. Poornachandra Tejaswi, G.S. Shivarudrappa and Chandrashekara Kambara have already committed themselves to planting trees and spending time at the Spoorthi Vana.

Kambara, who is also an MLC, said he will ask all his 75 colleagues to take up the project. Parisara is also planning to rope in treelover Saalumarada Thimmakka, who has maintained 400 banyan trees along highways near her village in Magadi taluk, where the Spoorthi Vana is also situated.

The programme, where 50 trees are to be planted in one acre, is to be launched on Saturday. Contact: BWSSBCombined Jewel Filters, 18th Cross, Malleswaram; email: ecolinker@hotmail.com; phone: 94480-77019/98450-43309.