Date:13/11/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/11/13/stories/2006111317140200.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Of trees in rural areas

Alladi Jayasri

S.G. Neginhal has come up with `Golden Trees Greenspaces and Urban Forestry'

BANGALORE: It is not too well known that urban forestry became a buzz-word in the 1980s, thanks to the former Chief Minister late R. Gundu Rao's conviction that increasing the tree cover in Bangalore is best handled by forest officers who were normally confined to managing and protecting reserve forests.

His successor, late Ramakrishna Hegde, thought along the same lines, and the years from 1982 to 1987 came to be what retired forest officer S.G. Neginhal, describes as the "golden years" when Bangalore's green cover increased dramatically.

Even the former Prime Minister late Rajiv Gandhi was so impressed by Bangalore's success that he assigned the Director of Horticulture of Delhi the task of taking a lesson from Bangalore, and finally, urban tree planting become a subject that finds mention in the Five Year Plans.

Gundu Rao's decision to transfer the tree-planting work to the Forest Department from the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike and the Bangalore Development Authority paid off and Mr. Neginhal virtually authored the greening of Bangalore by planting 15 lakh tall seedlings from 1982 to 1988, picking up the Indira Priyadarshini Vriksha Mitra award for this noble task.

Sequel

Five years after he authored "A handbook of City Trees" that speaks of the how and why of trees suitable for urban spaces, Mr. Neginhal is ready with his sequel titled "Golden Trees Greenspaces and Urban Forestry".

The book to be released on Tuesday, covers countryside trees and the tree species that are to be found as one heads for the rural hinterland, even as it deals extensively with the basics of urban forestry.

It features 142 trees that are popular choices for planting in Indian towns and countryside.

There are additional references to allied species. Coloured photographs and inclusion of local names of the tree species make the book a handy companion for the layman on a "tree-walk", as well as the field-tripper.

Interesting section

An interesting section of the book, on managing urban green spaces, dwells at some length on the history of urban forestry, rural forestry, covering cities outside the Indian sub-continent, and ancient civilisations such as Indus Valley, Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, the Vedic period, the Aryan era, and allusions in the epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the period of the Buddha and Mahavira, the Mauryan age and through to the Moghul period, the coming of the European influence and also the post-Independence urban forestry.