George Remedios, an environmental activist and two volunteers dug a plot of soil on the sprawling grounds a school in Mumbai’s heart to plant saplings in a food for forest hidden among tall concrete buildings.
Remedios, who founded The Turning Tide, says that she brought some fruit tree saplings and some flowering tree saplings. This will help in pollinators as we grow more food.
The miniature forest was created by planting shorter trees, creepers, and shrubs in different layers beneath tall coconut trees. They all produce edible or fruiting plants.
This food forest is just one of the dozen edible islands that the group has created in and around Mumbai. The inspiration was the disappearing green spaces in a densely populated city of more than 20,000,000 that has lost approximately 40% of its green cover over the past 30 years due to relentless urbanization.
Remedios spent years planting trees along roadsides to make up for the loss. Then he came up with the idea of turning unused land in schools, orphanages, and old age homes into food forest.
We are fed up with the environment and the soaring construction all around. Friends lost their parents to lung disease. Remedios says that my mom suffered from asthma and had to deal with poor air quality. “I knew trees were something that gave us oxygen, shade, and protected us from heat. They also pull in particulate matter, acting as buffers, like carbon sinks.”
It was not an easy task to create a food forest. To create a forest, you first had to regenerate the soil. It was also useful to dry leaves that normally end up in the landfills. The school also started composting both garden waste and kitchen waste to speed up the process of creating fertile soil.
Over the past three years, trees such as papaya and pomegranate have flourished under tall coconut trees. There is an abandoned slide and a merry-go round in their midst — a reminder of an old school playground. The sound of chirping birds replaces traffic’s incessant hum amid the trees.
Other functions are also fulfilled by the food forest. It prevents waterlogging, which is common in cities that experience heavy monsoons. It is a waste management system that saves the institutions where they were planted hundreds of dollars.
Volunteers often volunteer their time to care for the project on weekends. Floyd Almeida, a city resident, digs into the soil to plant a seedling. This is a way for him to regain the connection with nature that he lost when his low-lying childhood house was replaced by a tall building. Although the area around the school was once populated by bungalows, it has changed to include more modern buildings and a larger number of trees.
Almeida explains that it’s good to get dirty, clean up the trash and mud, as he prepares the soil to grow chili seeds. It’s beautiful because there are birds and bees. It is like listening to the birds chirp when you come in the morning.
Jasmine Bagri (a city resident) brings a lemongrass seedling that will be planted in the food forests. She believes it is important that ordinary people do something to help the environment and improve cities that are suffering from the effects of large populations. Bagri says that it is very easy to just sit and have a conference, a WhatsApp Group, and talk about it. But, instead of doing that you should plant at least one sapling.
Remedios believes that young children will learn more about nature as schools reopen following nearly two years of COVID restriction.
He says that he was the victim of many jokes and much skepticism three years ago when he quit his job as an advertising executive to become an environmentalist full-time. He recalls that people called him the village idiot.
The forest is starting to be a draw. I want to stay there. I feel like I want to work, I really want to dig in. Bagri giggles as he sees so many small plants. These are heaven, these places should be treasured and cherished.
“The Turning Tide”, which is spreading its wings to other cities, is growing similar green patches at Pune, where Remedios temporarily relocated.
After a hard day’s work, the food forest is a great place to relax. He pulls up a chair, grabs a book, and spends some time reading under the shade trees.