Award-Winning Teacher Turns His School Campus into a Mini Forest With Over 450 Trees

Raphi Ramanath, a biology teacher from Kerala, has set up a herbal garden with 150 plants and a Miyawaki forest with over 450 trees on his school campus.

By Tina Freese

May 23, 2023

It all began when Raphi Ramanath, a biology teacher at Vignjana Vilasini Higher Secondary School (VVHSS) in Kerala, became the coordinator of his school’s eco-club.

His aim was simple — to create awareness among the children on the importance of the environment and nature conservation. For this, he set up a herbal garden and a mini forest with 450 trees on the campus.

“We started the herbal garden with the help of the forest department and they provided us with 50 saplings. We kept on planting more and now the herbal garden has grown so much that they are not plants anymore but full-grown trees,” he informs The Better India.

Apart from the garden, he used the Japanese Miyawaki method to set up a mini forest on the campus. “We also built a fence surrounding the mini-forest. The forest, named ‘Vidyavanam’, now has over 450 trees of 112 varieties,” he says.

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