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São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest
https://thursd.com/articles/helio-da-silva-sao-paulo-tiquatira-linear-park https://thursd.com/articles/helio-da-silva-sao-paulo-tiquati...
- thataccount 2mo agoTypifies the old "you don't plant trees for you but you plant them for those who come after you."
- robocat 2mo agoHélio da Silva, o plantador de árvores Looks like his real name (da Silva is the most common surname in Brazil) and nominative determinism: "Sun of the Forest". Silvicultura. I'm trying to get some trees to grow - it's a lot of work: Hélio has spent huge amounts of time and money on it (average wage might be USD1000/month and article says he was spending 7000 a year and if that was in the past then amount is a lot more in today's dollars).
- celias 2mo agoThe Man Who Planted Trees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_zuNtf3_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_zuNtf3_g
- Hugsbox 2mo agoIt's slightly annoying that it literally says in the article that he has a photo album showing the growth of the area over time, yet the article chooses to use an AI-generated image at the top instead to depict that. An AI-generated image that looks like shit. What a way to represent this man's incredible accomplishment.
- eru 2mo agoYou might like https://saopaulosecreto.com/en/tiquatira-linear-park-en/ https://saopaulosecreto.com/en/tiquatira-linear-park-en/ better.
- QuantumNomad_ 2mo agoMods should replace the OP link from India times with this saopaulosecreto link instead
- tomhow 2mo agoUpdated, thanks! Originally submitted URL: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/in-2003-a-retired-man-planted-trees-on-forgotten-land-alone-20-years-later-it-had-become-one-of-sao-paulos-largest-urban-forests/articleshow/132761848.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/in-2...
- lkuty 2mo agoI am happy I always read some HN comments before clicking on the OP link. I can save time. We should plant trees everywhere in the world, that's one of the great thing we can do for this planet and thus for us.
- nemo_captain 2mo agoThis!!! I notice it ALL the time. Do people really find it nice to use an AI generated image instead of using a real picture in reporting? Our taste is going down every single day it feels like.
- SXX 2mo agoHigh tech, low life.
- necovek 2mo agoSince there were no public domain images to use, it was deemed more ecological to generate one with AI than fly a reporter to Sao Paolo and snap a few photos.
- whstl 2mo agoI don't think anyone finds this specially nice or compelling, even the people implementing or asking for it. The usage of AI here is just a way of doing things for cheap to satisfy some sort of minimal requirement in the content, probably something SEO related, or just content padding. This is what the whole AI transformation is about: ticking boxes for cheap.
- tvbusy 2mo agoNow I remember why I have the site in my adblock list. AI Illustrations are an immediate block for me.
- crossroadsguy 2mo agoThis is Times of India. Shortened as "ToI," and we here in India gracefully append "let" to it (well earned and established moniker). (And no, the printed edition's paper quality isn't suitable for "that" purpose.)
- 1saadcodes 2mo agoLove seeing stuff like this
- femto 2mo agoA similar story to Wendy's Secret Garden in Sydney, Australia? https://www.wendyssecretgarden.org.au/ https://www.wendyssecretgarden.org.au/ After her husband's death in 1992, Wendy Whiteley took to cleaning up an unused railway easement behind her house. It turned into a substantial garden. The railways refused to guarantee its future (it was on their land), but in 2015 it became an official park. Well worth a visit on a sunny afternoon if you are in Sydney.
- nl 2mo agoI think this is a great story. For those who aren't aware, that strip of land is probably some of the most valuable residential land on earth. HK: $200,000+/ sq m (for premium properties on The Peak) Monoco: $56,000/sq m Milson's Point (next to Wendy's Secret Garden): $33,000/sq m Pacific Heights, SF: $22,000/sq m (According to my/ChattyG's calcs)
- femto 2mo agoThe battle for Wendy's garden will pale into insignificance compared to the battle for a "Sydney Harbour High Line". https://www.sydneyharbourhighline.org.au/ https://www.sydneyharbourhighline.org.au/ In 2023 the NSW government committed to turn the adjacent harbourfront railway line into a public linear park. The next government shredded the agreement and has announced it wants housing everywhere. IMO it's prime land that is too valuable to be privately owned and should be publicly accessible. Anyone who disagrees should go for a harbourfront walk on a sunny afternoon. (Billionaires who's takeaway from the experience would be to buy the land for their own use don't count.) The same battle played out in Cremorne in the 1890's. Today the park is one of Sydney's jewels. https://www.bonditomanly.com/bondi-to-manly-walk-blog/2020/10/16/not-to-be-missed-cremorne-point https://www.bonditomanly.com/bondi-to-manly-walk-blog/2020/1...
- arjie 2mo agoThere's a children's book that I've been reading to my daughter called The Curious Garden about a boy gardening on abandoned tracks. It's a reference to the High Line, of course, but it's interesting there's more than one like this. I suppose the end of the age of passenger rail in these countries offered opportunities like this.
- throwaway2037 2mo agoTime of India is such a shit news source that it should be banned from HN. The ToI article is dated: 2026-08-01 In the article it says: > According to Forbes India, in 2003, Helio da Silva... I Google searched for "Forbes India, in 2003, Helio da Silva" and found the original here: https://www.forbesindia.com/article/lifes/crazy-tree-planter-greening-sao-paulo-concrete-jungle/94283/1 https://www.forbesindia.com/article/lifes/crazy-tree-planter... Date? 2024-09-30 I guess ToI is having summer interns use LLMs to summarise old newspaper articles to produce more AI slop. Yay.
- smallerize 2mo agoYour Forbes India link says "Without any formal authorization, Da Silva started in 2003"
- alister 2mo agoI wanted to copy and paste the name of the park from the Times of India article so I could see the location in Google Maps, but the Times of India injects their URL into anything you try to copy. Such antisocial behavior. And I can't believe that browsers (Firefox in my case) even permit this. Is there ever a legitimate web-design reason to override copy or Ctrl^C?
- nottorp 2mo agoMost of the time the legitimat web-design reason for user hostile behaviour is marketing/monetizing/spyware. Morally legitimate, you ask? :)
- thelastgallon 2mo agoThere are a few one man army like this. Dashrath Manjhi is best known for carving a 110-metre-long (360 ft), 9.1-metre-wide (30 ft), and 7.7-metre-deep (25 ft) path through a ridge of hills using only a hammer and a chisel, because his wife fell and died from injuries due to the ridge blocking easy access to a nearby hospital on time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi
- embedding-shape 2mo ago> path through a ridge of hills using only a hammer and a chisel I know you put the numbers and everything, but I didn't quite grasp just what a monumentous task this was until I saw the image of the "path through a ridge": https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Link_between_Ghivra_Mauja_in_Gehlaur_Ghati_to_Atara_Prakhand_Wazirganj_made_by_Dashrath_Manjhi_IMG_20191127_145150.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Link_between_Ghivra_... It is absolutely bananas (and wonderful!) what a single human can achieve with love, passion and determination.
- zemvpferreira 2mo agoI echo that sentiment but oppose the positive adjectives tied to his motivation. Rather I believe can be at our best when motivated by our dark emotions towards positive actions: Grief, rage, madness. Mr. Manjhi was compelled to this momentous thing after his world was torn apart by it. He persevered while the very people whose lives and whose children's lives he was improving mocked him. He worked for 20 years compelled by his demons and the universe is better off for it. I hope destroying the mountain gave him peace.
- embedding-shape 2mo agoI dunno. Grief, rage and madness can only take you so far. The care and compassion for other human beings is what makes you continue. I don't think he'd be able to hammer down such a path for the duration of 20+ years unless he was deeply passionate about preventing the same issue for others in the future, even if they mocked and taunted him at the time.
- HeartStrings 2mo agoObsessive fanaticism is the key to a life not wasted.
- smallnix 2mo agoRight, all these non-obsessed fanatics wasted their life. And don't get me even started on non-fanatics!
- inigyou 2mo agoBut you can't just trick yourself into obsessively fanaticising something random just so you won't feel your life is wasted.
- SchwKatze 2mo agoThis reminded the movie Ikiru (いきる), basically a elder discovered he will die and after some time he finds a purpose to its meaningless life, transform a wasteland into a playground. All these stories have one thing in common: be obsessed with something that will improve other people's life.
- inigyou 2mo agoyeah but you have to find it. You can't just pick something at random.
- saidnooneever 2mo agolove this. feel like in my country it would be labeled some kind of 'hazard' because it wasnt contract work and then it will be pulled out again (:
- namenotrequired 2mo agoAccording to the article, Hélio’s work was also purposefully destroyed several times
- oatmeal1 2mo agoI find the idea of planting trees ironic. It would seem to me the better aim would be identifying the issue as to why native plants are not already reproducing successfully, and then fix it. Plants are quite good at reproducing themselves, even if not in the immediate area.
- matherial 2mo agoWhat? No. Plants colonize new areas in complex succession sequences that require hundreds of years to play out. It might start with grasses, then shrubs, then dense stands of trees that die off and are replaced by stands of other trees... maybe there's a fire that needs to happen in between... and let me remind you that a "city park" is not exactly a natural formation anyway. If you want a park in 30-50 years, you need to plant trees and design it with specific public-use objectives in mind.
- culi 2mo agoAgreed and I think ecological succession is often underappreciated. In secondary succession an ecosystem typically has a deep soil seed bank[0] to draw from. If a plot of land has been ravaged by human development and then abandoned, that may be absent and some human intervention can totally speed things along [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_seed_bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_seed_bank
- Sha1rholder 2mo agoWhat do you think botanists and ecologists were doing before large-scale tree planting began?
- TitaRusell 2mo ago[dead]
- lucasoshiro 2mo ago> It would seem to me the better aim would be identifying the issue as to why native plants are not already reproducing successfully I live nearby. The issue is: it's located between two lanes of an avenue in a densely populated neighborhood of the largest city in americas. Imagine opening a 100m wide strip of grass in manhattan, you won't expect it to naturally turn into a forest. Same here.
- dzdt 2mo agoBetter article with good pictures : https://thursd.com/articles/helio-da-silva-sao-paulo-tiquatira-linear-park https://thursd.com/articles/helio-da-silva-sao-paulo-tiquati...
- tomhow 2mo agoWe tried that but then someone pointed out this one which is even better (and probably the most original source): https://saopaulosecreto.com/en/tiquatira-linear-park-en/ https://saopaulosecreto.com/en/tiquatira-linear-park-en/
- kang 2mo agoive had hard time finding place to plant trees, can someone share if they of any 'forgotten lands'
- nextaccountic 2mo agoThere's a subreddit about that, https://old.reddit.com/r/GuerrillaGardening/ https://old.reddit.com/r/GuerrillaGardening/ Basically if you don't own land, you can plant stuff on.. land you don't own
- prawn 2mo agoMy family has volunteered a few times to spend a day planting trees on farmland given over to conservation in Australia. It’s good fun and very sociable. There’d be organisations that do this in many countries.
- tim-projects 2mo agoI often speak to people online who look at society and want to tear it down and start again. I've never understood that attitude. Growth out of decay takes work, but it takes considerably less work than accelerated decay and then trying to start again when there is nothing fertile left to build on. I like this article because it demonstrates that there is always fertile land and opportunities where people are not looking.
- vouaobrasil 2mo agoThe general direction of society is still immense destruction of the biosphere. That doesn't change because you can make conditions better locally and in the short term, especially when such actions don't go against the general momentum of society. The fact is, there's often conflation with improving individual lives and conditions (the warm fuzzy feeling) with actually doing real good when it comes to our impact on this planet. The former is not necessarily related to the latter, especially since the system has just the right amount of leeway to allow people to feel better and let off steam without really changing the ultimate long-term direction. Even if there are many opportunities as you say, if the general momentum of society has three destructive acts for every one good one and that doesn't change, then society is still as destructive as ever. For instance, for people who care deeply about nature and the non-human aspects of the planet, human society is incredibly destructive and hasn't done much to change that direction, regardless of how many feel-good projects have occurred.
- meindnoch 2mo agoAI-generated image → instant churn
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- lucasoshiro 2mo agoWhich of the images do you think that are AI-generated? If I didn't miss something, all of them are from the real place.
- weinzierl 2mo agoThis is so important, especially in São Paulo. This city has 100000 homeless people living there. Imagine the population of a medium-sized city living with no roof over their head in a city with a population 100x that big.
- khalic 2mo agoIt feels great to see this kind of story. We're all suffering from this (false) idea that we can't do anything, things are too bad, somebody else has done it before, or somebody else will do it. The fact is, humanity is pulled forward by people like this, who find their goal and don't let it go. We need this right now, we're stepping into a pretty dark century, we're probably going to lose millions or billions of people to the effects of climate change, and we need every little bit of hope we can muster and build up.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- colechristensen 2mo agoGo plant an oak tree. Not in theory, not a big plan for a monumental effort, just plant an oak tree. They survive for many lives of men and are a cornerstone for feeding the entire ecosystem. If you can't plant one where you're supposed to, plant one where you're not. It takes an afternoon not a lifetime.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoWhere I am white oak grows by the hundreds of thousands. I see new seedlings ever summer but I would estimate only about 3-5% get past that seedling stage. All that to say that an afternoon of work isn’t enough, if you want to grow a tree you need to follow up on it for atleast a year or more.
- schnevets 2mo agoHalf of my property is woods and there are multiple fallen oaks that are slowly returning to the ground, but the canopy remains exposed. I'm constantly torn between letting "nature take its course" or speeding things up with a chainsaw and carefully sapling. I have also considered walnuts or fruit-bearing trees and slowly converting my land to something more akin to a food forest.
- colechristensen 2mo ago
- fragmede 2mo agoThe nerd version of this is Larry Finger. After retiring from physics and software development, he dedicated his life to open source wifi drivers for Linux, contributing over 1500 patches to various drivers to get a wide variety of hardware to work under Linux. It was a really thankless task to figure out undocumented hardware. He passed mid-2024, contributing late into his life.
- inigyou 2mo agoHow did he stay motivated?
- Schlagbohrer 2mo agoFolks might also be interested in San Fransisco's own "Tenderloin National Forest" https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tenderloin-national-forest https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tenderloin-national-fore... Is there some abandoned parking lot in your town? Get some friends together with pick axes for a depaving party. Or, for something a bit less dedicated, craft some seed bombs (mix dirt and clay together into small cookie balls with native seeds in them) and throw them into the abandoned area. Boom, wildflowers, then pollinators, insects, birds, voila.
- embedding-shape 2mo ago> Or, for something a bit less dedicated, craft some seed bombs (mix dirt and clay together into small cookie balls with native seeds in them) and throw them into the abandoned area This is a lot of fun (albeit illegal in many places) to spruce up somewhat dead-looking villages and towns. Traveling with a passenger that holds a sack of seeds out the window is another way :) Do make sure you're actually using seeds of plants from naturally occurring species though, so you don't go around introducing new and invasive species that could potentially be harmful to the native species.
- specialist 2mo agoI'm very interested in "seed bombs". We have to plant something like one trillion trees just to keep up with losses from forest fires. Imagine the economics, supply chain, science, innovation, etc required to plant one trillion trees and all their supporting shrubs and ground cover. My impression is they work well enough for flowers. I have no idea about shrubs or ground cover. I'm aware there's some efforts to seed bomb trees. There was one such experiment in Discovery Park Seattle WA. I chatted with some people from WSU, Tacoma Tree Project, or something like that. That particular experiment tried using drones over a small plot. None of the seeds sprouted. (Sorry, I don't have more details.) This was adjacent to some other experiments. eg Tacoma Tree Project & WSU are investigating why native redcedars are now perishing faster, and maybe find ways to mitigate the loss. I think there's about a dozen research plots scattered around the Puget Sound. I don't spend much time following forest restoration "news". But I do know that it's a nascent industry that'll become huge.
- mirmor23 2mo agoAmazing guy. I like the part where he was not deterred by the (stereotypical human garbage) business guy that kept destroying the plants so his hoarding of the land didn't get in the way. Humboldt redwoods state park, and 'avenue of the giants' wouldn't exist if not for the tireless efforts of environmentalists.
- nmandapa 2mo agoTrue, amazing places to visit and pass onto the future generations. Particularly like them right after the rainfall, great spots to checkout.
- Gravityloss 2mo agoIt's the asymmetry at play. It takes a few minutes to fell a tree. While it takes decades to grow. To grow an actually fully grown 100 year old tree is a multigenerational project. How could you foster such things? There's always short-sighted people and generations, it's close to impossible to make this happen. I've seen it personally when relatives have felled century old yard trees planted by our ancestors, for no practical purpose. There is at least one foundation that attempts to preserve forest, with strict rules, which has received already some donated forests. But who knows how that can be corrupted over the time forest actually takes to grow.
- bluGill 2mo agoTrees don't live forever. A fully grown cottonwood tree (I'm picking on example I know of, others are similar, but different in details) at 100 years old is impressive, but that is near the typical lifespan and so at 120 years old that tree is dead of old age (in ideal conditions they live to 400 years, but 100 years is above average in nature). Forests are a constant cycle of new trees growing. Forest fires are a very important part of the forest cycle in many places. So be careful about funding efforts to fight forest fires - often the correct answer is to light more of them (see a forester for details of your local forest).
- Gravityloss 2mo agoSure. Many pines can survive forest fires. But some other trees don't or are short lived anyway. I never suggested trees live forever. But 100 years is not a long time for many.
- igleria 2mo ago> He believed that if he planted native species, the soil would recognize them and vice versa, quite like something etched in memory. why does reading this feel so good?
- danhdsss 2mo agoBecause it's sublime.
- rbreve 2mo agoRelated a recommend this documentary by Sebastião Salgado, The Salt of the Earth
- Mizza 2mo agoThe story of the High Line in NYC is pretty similar, Burnside in Portland and FDR in Philly.. you can just do things! (Except in the UK, where you can't.)
- telesilla 2mo agoI've always admired Madrid's Rio and also Valencia. Adding trees to urban life == massive social win.
- rayiner 2mo agoUgh, graffiti is really a crime against the built environment: https://offloadmedia.feverup.com/saopaulosecreto.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/08142152/1280px-Tiquatira26.jpg https://offloadmedia.feverup.com/saopaulosecreto.com/wp-cont.... I've never been, but I remember they had a big push some years ago to ban outdoor advertising to reduce "visual pollution." Sao Paulo looks so clean and beautiful from Google Street View--it makes the ugliness of the graffiti really stand out. I can't comprehend the nasty mind that decides to pollute other people's environment like that.
- jibcage 2mo agoMy hot take: as long as the artists (or vandals I suppose, depending on your point of view) are talented, I don’t actually mind. It adds a “lived-in” character to the space which I quite like. Defacing small business owners’ property is obviously a dick move but if you’re at an abandoned warehouse, skatepark, or waterfront, I say go nuts.
- rayiner 2mo agoDefacing public property is worse. It's toxic individualism and self-expression. If people wanted to put up a mural, they'd collectively vote to do so. In a proper society, graffiti artists would face public punishment from the collective.
- jibcage 2mo agoIs it really toxic individualism if there’s a (mostly healthy) subculture dedicated to it, though? In a “proper society” we could pass around the talking stick to reach consensus on a whole grab bag of things. I’m not a tagger myself, but I do think there is something poetically democratic about people participating in the public forum in this way. At least, beyond the four-letter words and flying dicks, anyways.
- rayiner 2mo agoYes, because the subculture doesn't represent the majority. It's the opposite of "democratic"--it's a small group of people imposing their aesthetic on what you acknowledge is a "public form"--without the consent of the public. "Democracy" isn't about individuals or small groups making their voices heard. That might be a necessary factor, but it's not the purpose. Democracy is about the majority having the right to create the kind of society they want to live in. Maybe people in Sao Paulo like the graffiti (or maybe not, since the ban on other types of visual pollution seems popular). But it's the majority's decision to make.
- lgcmo 2mo agoAnother related Brazilian interesting fact is that almost all greenery in Rio de Janeiro is replanted, since must was coffee plantations. The last emperor of Brazil decided to replant it all, since it was affecting wellbeing and water supply to the city at the time
- mittsquinter 2mo agoAnother deforesting story/method: the Miyawaki Method, was developed in the 1970s by botanist Akira Miyawaki. https://www.sugiproject.com/blog/miyawaki-method-for-creating-forests https://www.sugiproject.com/blog/miyawaki-method-for-creatin...
- philipov 2mo ago"View this post on Instagram" No thanks, put into the article.
- lucasoshiro 2mo agoIf you have an account, you can follow his profile and support his work. If you don't have, you can see the images anyway. If the author simply put the image into the article it would only be sending kudos to Hélio instead of supporting him. Of course a single follow or profile view is not that much, but it helps to spread his work
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- rubinlinux 1mo agoReminds me of The Man Who Planted Trees: https://vimeo.com/829168309 https://vimeo.com/829168309
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1mo agoImagine he lived in a area with vacant land and busy-body HOA and/or municipal government. He'd have been fined and arrested.