Greening the city and its outskirts has been a passion for Madhava Ullal for the past 25 years.
Mr. Ullal, a pigmy collector by profession, has planted about 19,000 saplings of different varieties on the premises of schools, colleges, places of worship, burial grounds, crematoriums and on the road sides.
His focus is now on planting the saplings of star apple on the premises of houses.
Mr. Ullal is planning to plant five saplings each on the premises of five houses each per week. Thus, he would plant 60 saplings in 12 weeks.
He planted the first sapling as part of the drive in the house of Navneeth Shetty at Kadri on Monday.
“As of now, 45 houses have been selected for the purpose,” he told The Hindu .
Mr. Ullal is aware that this is an unusual season to plant saplings. As the owners would be forced to water them for survival, it would only increase their love on greenery, he claims.
Star apple bears fruit in four years. It gives fruits to house owners and feeds birds, squirrels, bats and the like too.
Mr. Ullal proudly points out that a star apple plant which he planted on the premises of a house near Bunts Hostel four years ago on an experimental basis started yielding from last year. “There were 150 fruit last year and there are about 250 fruit this year,” he said.
Mr. Ullal works from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. to earn his livelihood and utilises mornings to work on his passion. He finds time to water some of the plants planted by him too.
Speaking on global warming, Mr. Ullal helplessly watches the government cutting some of the trees planted by him for “development works”. “Of about 2,000 saplings planted by me in Ullal in 2003, about 200 were cut recently for laying a four-lane concrete road from Thokkottu Circle to Ullal Circle,” he said.
A fire in the crematoria in Ullal destroyed his 126 plants in 2004.
