385 Banyan Trees Instead of Children: The Extraordinary Love of Saalumarada Thimmakka

On a country road in Karnataka, between the villages of Hulikal and Kudur, giant banyan trees stand in a long row on both sides, their branches meeting overhead. Their trunks and hanging roots shade travellers from the sun, and birds nest in their branches.

These trees were not planted by a government department or a company. They were planted, one by one, by a poor village couple who had no children of their own and chose to raise trees instead.

The woman was Thimmakka. People came to call her Saalumarada Thimmakka, “Thimmakka of the row of trees” in Kannada ^[1].

A hard beginning

Thimmakka was born on 30 June 1911 in Gubbi taluk of Tumakuru district ^[1]. She never went to school. She married Chikkaiah, and the couple moved to Hulikal village in Magadi taluk ^[1].

Children of a different kind

The couple had no children. Instead, they began planting banyan saplings along the road from Hulikal to Kudur and caring for them as if they were their own ^[1].

The young trees needed water in a dry area, and protection from grazing cattle. Year after year, the couple looked after them. In the end they raised 385 banyan trees along a 4.5-kilometre stretch, and over the decades Thimmakka helped grow thousands more ^[1].

Recognition comes

For years, few outside the village knew what they had done. Slowly, her story spread. Thimmakka received the National Citizen Award in 1995, the Indira Priyadarshini Vrikshamitra Award in 1997 and the Nadoja Award from Hampi University in 2010 ^[1]. In 2019, the Central University of Karnataka gave her an honorary doctorate ^[4].

That year she also received the Padma Shri ^[1]. At the ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan on 16 March 2019, when President Ram Nath Kovind asked her to face the camera, she placed her palm on his forehead in blessing. The hall broke into applause, and the President later wrote that he was deeply touched ^[3]. She then planted a sapling at Rashtrapati Bhavan ^[3].

Later years

After her husband’s death, Thimmakka adopted a son, Umesh, and later lived with him in Hassan district ^[1]. She kept speaking at schools and events, urging people to plant and protect trees.

Farewell to the Mother of Trees

Saalumarada Thimmakka died on 14 November 2025 in a hospital in Bengaluru, aged 114 ^[1]. She was laid to rest with full state honours ^[2].

The trees she planted will go on giving shade and shelter for generations. In a very real sense, her children will outlive her by a century or more.

Why it matters

Saalumarada Thimmakka had no schooling, no money and no power. Yet she became one of India’s best-loved environmentalists. As travellers pass under the banyans between Hulikal and Kudur, they are sheltered by the patience and love of a woman who chose to become a mother of trees.