“The Miyawaki forest developed near Ponnimanthurai in Dindigul is the fourth mega project of Dindi-Ma-Vanam, a voluntary organisation,” said M. Rajaram, the organisation’s core member.
Miyawaki forest is a successful type of closed plantation proposed by Akira Miyawaki, a Japanese botanist, to combat environmental issues caused by urbanisation.
The model involves planting saplings in a tight space which when planted after proper pit preparation and planning, will emerge as a mini forest in a surprisingly quick time, said Mr Rajaram. These models would balance the human-tree ratio in the world that is moving fast towards urbanisation.
The Miyawaki or ‘urban’ forest of 10 acres at Ponnimanthurai is maintained by Dindi-Ma-Vanam and District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) on the land that belongs to the Dindigul Corporation.
“A year back, the land was identified as a waste dump. The soil was highly contaminated with total dissolved solids (TDS) level at 3,000 mg per litre owing to the tannery effluent plants established in its surroundings,” he said.
The team had to restore healthy soil in the area for about three feet.
Now the green oasis houses as many as 12,000 trees including 30 species of trees like malai vembu, kumil, vaagai, teak, flowering trees such as mayil kondrai, manjal kondrai, fruit-bearing such as pomegranate, guava, blackberries etc.
“There is no better time to start creating a Miyawaki forest than during the rainy season. Usually, the pit preparation takes 1-2 months–all it needs is healthy seeds and organic waste like vegetable shreddings, leaves etc. and of course water,” said Mr Rajaram.
Planting native varieties is an essential component of the forest model. People can also use vacant space within their house compounds to make smaller Miyawakis of greens, vegetables etc., he added.
He said that Mr Miyawaki calls the model as an ‘oxygen bomb’ as it caters to the need of the urban population. The temperature will be cooler in the region thereby helping in the fight against climate change.
Reducing air pollution, acting as a home to birds and insects, increasing groundwater levels etc are a few advantages of this genius concept.
The quickest feature of this concept is that trees in Miyawaki forests grow 10 times faster than the trees planted in a regular manner and turn self-sustainable after a year of maintenance, he added.
