The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation set a Guinness World Record on July 12, 2026, after more than 25,000 volunteers planted 3.61 lakh saplings in a single hour at Bhadaj, in the city’s Thaltej ward. The drive, carried out using the dense-planting Miyawaki method across roughly 76,000 square metres near the Gota-Godhavi canal, was held in the presence of Union Home Minister and Gandhinagar MP Amit Shah, under whose ‘Hariyali Lok Sabha’ afforestation campaign the event was organised.
Why the Miyawaki method
Conventional plantation drives space out saplings widely and often see thin survival rates. The Miyawaki technique packs native species close together to mimic a natural, multi-layered forest. Proponents say it grows roughly ten times faster and far denser than a plantation of the same size, which is why Indian civic bodies trying to expand green cover on limited urban land have taken to it. Around 35 indigenous tree species went into the ground at Bhadaj, according to reports from the event.
Ahmedabad has repeatedly ranked among India’s hotter large cities in summer heat-action assessments. Its municipal corporation has leaned on Miyawaki-style micro-forests at scattered sites in recent years as a low-cost way to chip away at the urban heat-island effect, alongside more conventional avenue plantations.
What it means for residents
A single-day record is a headline. The real test for any mass plantation drive is survival past the first two monsoons, when unmaintained saplings typically die off in large numbers. The Bhadaj plantation is billed as the opening move in a far larger push: AMC has committed to planting 50 lakh trees, and organisers have set a target of 1.25 crore trees across the wider Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency under the same campaign. Sustained upkeep could mean residents in and around Thaltej see a genuine dense-forest patch mature over three to five years, offering shade, some cooling, and habitat for birds and pollinators in a fast-urbanising part of the city. Lapsed maintenance, which has happened with earlier plantation drives elsewhere in Gujarat, would leave the record as the only lasting outcome.
Outlook
The number worth tracking is not the one-hour count but the survival rate AMC reports a year from now, and whether the promised 50-lakh-tree target comes with a dedicated maintenance budget rather than fading after the ribbon-cutting. Civic watchdogs and residents’ groups in Thaltej would do well to keep an eye on the Bhadaj site specifically, since it is now the most visible test case for whether Ahmedabad’s Miyawaki push delivers lasting green cover or another photo-op.
Sources: ANI, Daily Excelsior
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.