Thane: In an attempt to maintain greenery in their residential area, a group of around 20 denizens of Thane’s Hill Garden area came together and started a campaign to actively protect the newly saplings planted along the roads in their vicinity.
After completing the widening of the roads in the Happy Valley locality around two months ago, the Thane Municipal Corporation had planted around 87 neem saplings along the sides of these roads. The residents of this area, who frequently go jogging along these roads found that these saplings were dying due to the heat.
“Over the past few weeks, we noticed that the healthy neem plants were not able to bear the harsh sun, and were already starting to wither. We don’t even know if they were being properly watered as they were clearly dying. A few of us came together and chalked out a plan to save these plants as we cannot afford to lose any greenery here,” said Sashikumar Nair, secretary of Hill Garden Ayyappa Bhakta Sangam NGO, who has taken up this mission.
Since Sunday, this group of 20 citizens not only cleared around 25kg of waste and debris from around these saplings, but also mended the green guards around the plants, added extra red soil in place of the debris and ensured that the plants are regularly watered.
“We had to dig around 1.5 feet around the plants to ensure the roots have enough space to grow into, and filled the vacant space with fertile red soil which we collected from the garden patches of our society. We also used around 400 litres of water to water these 87 parched saplings,” Nair added.
A civic official said that if citizen groups actively join these activities, we can assure a 100 per cent survival rate of trees.”
