Last Saturday, residents of Rosary Church Street in Santhome woke up to a pleasant surprise. The neighbourhood was dotted with fresh green saplings, thanks to a greening exercise by Greater Chennai Corporation.

Saplings of native trees have been planted on the street.

“The workers dug pits and planted the saplings (with a 10-feet spacing between every two saplings), on both sides of the street. Each sapling, which is about three to four feet in height, has been protected with a metal guard. Though these trees will take about four to five years to grow or even more, we hope to see them become a canopy for our street,” says Tasneem Kutubuddin, a resident of Rosary Church Street.

She suggests that residents should come forward to maintain the trees. There is a sapling in front of almost every house in the neighbourhood. Each family or apartment could adopt a tree and care for it, she adds.

The park supervisor of Corporation’s Zone 9, Kathiravan has welcomed this suggestion. For now, the maintenance of the trees for one year has been entrusted with the contractor who is also in charge of planting the trees. “The contractor will water the saplings, maintain and replace plants that wither or get damaged. However, the saplings and nurture them will have better chances of surviving the hot summer, if they are watered and nurtured by resident-volunteers,” Kathiravan adds.

According to the official, saplings of native trees such as poovarasu, badam, arasu, pungam, neer marudhu and other varieties have been planted on this street.

The plantation drive is part of Corporation’s effort to increase the green cover in the city and officials in all the 15 zones have been asked to conduct the drive.

The civic body has set aside 720 saplings to be planted in areas coming under Zone 9, Kathiravan said, adding that they would be planted in various areas in the next 10 to 15 days.

“Already, about 200 trees have been planted along the Marina beach,” he says.