The next important issue concerns the selection of plants for the Miyawaki model. One of the first questions that most people ask is, “How do we choose the right plants?”. Miyawaki advises us to select indigenous varieties. He calls it “Potential Natural Vegetation”. In most cities, we have chopped away nearly all the local plants and trees. When we construct a house, the plants that had grown in that area get destroyed.
However, there are solutions. One, go to the immediate outskirts of the city to get an idea about it. Two, make enquiries with the elderly of the region. I have a friend named Raghunathan Nadar. He is 76 years old. He knows about all the trees in the region, and their uses too.
Researchers advise us to check pictures and documents about the region but since such a practice does not exist in Kerala, information will be hard to get. That leaves us with two options – ask local people, or explore on our own. The third is to approach the Kerala Biodiversity Board. They have made a list of plants and trees in every region in the state, and indicated which species grows best in mountainous regions or close to lakes, in laterite or clayey soil and so on.
This brings us to the next issue of sourcing these plants and trees. Incidentally, let me tell you about a recent visit I made to Amritandamayi Vidya Peedhom to take a class on Miyawaki. I looked at the plants growing near the Ashtamudi Lake in the vicinity, and noticed that lakeside varieties grew well in the courtyards of the nearby houses too. So investigation needs to be done on the uniqueness of the soil of Kerala.
Since I hail from Kottayam town, the place where I stayed in had laterite soil but Thiruvalla-Mannar region, where my aunt lives, has white sandy soil. Yet the same varieties of trees grow in both. I feel that the soil of Kerala will support all kinds of trees but this argument needs to be proven through experiment. I personally plant various saplings to find out whether they will grow in our soil. So far, all of them have shown almost the same rate of growth in different soils. The only exception is Munnar, a high altitude region, where the growth is relatively slower. At crowdforesting.org, you will see a video which shows that plants in the plot owned by Anitha and Jayakumar take only six months to grow to a height that the same varieties take 12 months in other regions. Their plot is wet, and the soil clayey. Water is available one foot below the ground.
There is no need to worry excessively about choosing the right plants. Those that grow elsewhere will grow in our patch of land too. It will be available on the crowdforesting website shortly from where we will get information on the plants recommended by the Biodiversity Board.