For years, Devaki Amma’s days began in the paddy fields of Muthukulam, a coastal village in Kerala’s Alappuzha district. Farming was the rhythm of her life, work she had known since childhood and continued alongside her husband, Gopalakrishna Pillai, a retired headmaster.
Then, at 46, a car accident brought that rhythm to a sudden stop.
The injury severely restricted her movement, and doctors advised her to avoid physical strain for nearly three years. For someone used to working outdoors from dawn, the long stretch of enforced rest felt unbearable. The fields she had tended for decades were suddenly beyond her reach.
Life, as she knew it, had changed overnight.
How recovery turned into a habit of planting
Confined largely to her home, Devaki Amma began planting a single sapling on the sandy plot near her house, land that had until then only been used for post-harvest activities. It gave her something to do while her body healed. She planted another, then another. There was no plan to build a forest. It was simply a way to pass the days without her usual work.
That small, repeated act did not stop once she recovered. Friends and relatives began bringing seeds and cuttings on their visits, and her husband and children joined in the effort.
Instead of chemical fertilisers, Devaki Amma relied on leaf litter, mulching and manure from home-reared cattle to steadily improve nutrient-poor coastal sandy soil. Photograph: (AI-Generated image)
Her daughter Thankamani, who would go on to head the Environmental Engineering department at a Thiruvananthapuram College, grew up watching this quiet, steady labour.
What had started as a way to escape boredom slowly turned into a shared family project, and then into Devaki Amma’s life’s purpose.
Turning sandy land into a living forest
Over more than four decades, Devaki Amma’s saplings spread across nearly five acres of coastal sandy soil, a stretch of land she named Thapovanam. She worked without formal training, relying instead on close observation of the soil and the local climate. Mulching, organic manure from home-reared cattle, and careful retention of leaf litter gradually improved land that was never expected to hold a forest.
As Kerala’s monsoon pattern shifted over the decades, with longer dry spells followed by concentrated bursts of heavy rain, Devaki Amma adjusted her methods rather than abandoning them.
Her family adapted their mulching techniques at intervals to prevent waterlogging and protect root systems, a set of solutions drawn entirely from years of trial and repeated observation rather than any textbook.
Long before receiving the Padma Shri, Devaki Amma’s conservation work earned the Indira Priyadarshini Vrikshamitra Award in 2003 and the Nari Shakti Puraskar in 2018. Photograph: (The Better India)
Two ponds within Thapovanam have never run dry. They support groundwater recharge, help prevent seawater from seeping into the coastal soil, and sustain aquatic life through the year.
The forest also holds an Indian bael tree estimated to be around 200 years old, far older than Thapovanam itself, now standing within an ecosystem that grew up around it.
3000 trees in Kerala’s forest-less district
Alappuzha is the only district in Kerala without natural forest cover, which makes Thapovanam more remarkable. The forest today holds over 3,000 recorded trees, plants, shrubs and creepers, including rare and medicinal species increasingly hard to find elsewhere in the state.
It shelters peacocks, owls, the emerald dove and migratory birds, alongside butterflies and other small wildlife, functioning as a repository for native Kerala plant species under threat from habitat loss.
Everything is maintained organically, without chemical fertilisers, using methods Devaki Amma developed over decades of trial and observation.
She built all of this without institutional funding or a trained team, working largely without public recognition for most of those four decades. Her methods now draw interest from a newer generation of tree planters, including Krishnakumar S, who has helped build over 40 dense urban forests to cool Indian cities.
From one sapling to a Padma Shri
Devaki Amma, now 91, is widely known across Kerala as ‘Vanamuthassi’, or grandmother of forests. Her work drew national attention well before this year, including the Indira Priyadarshini Vrikshamitra Award in 2003 and the Nari Shakti Puraskar in 2018, and a mention by former President Ram Nath Kovind in his Republic Day address.
This year, she received the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian honour, in the Unsung Heroes category. and was the only recipient from Kerala.
Thapovanam is now visited by students, researchers and nature enthusiasts studying grassroots biodiversity conservation, and Devaki Amma has encouraged schools, colleges and households across the state to grow native and medicinal plants of their own, often providing seeds and seedlings herself.
Her daughter Thankamani now cares for her full time, while the rest of the family continues to help maintain the forest.
Devaki Amma still tends her plants daily, urging everyone she meets to plant at least one tree. Her four decades of quiet, repeated effort stand as proof of what patience, a family’s support and a single sapling can eventually become.
