Karnataka: If the Chipko movement led by Sunderlal Bahuguna brought about a ban in green felling, a woman's struggle to make her village green and the surrounding areas is no less an effort.

On Women's Day CNN-IBN meets Saalumarada Thimakka, the gritty 75-year-old who planted more than 280 trees in Magadi taluka in Karnataka.

The landscape changed from open fields to beautiful tree lined avenues for the CNN-IBN team as they drove more than 80 kilometre out of Bangalore.

Their destination- this modest house in Hulikal village and its lone resident, Thimakka who has single-handedly planted more than 284 banyan trees along the highway that they drove past. She is not an environmentalist, nor was she paid for her efforts, so what made her do it?

“For 25 years I could not conceive so we thought why not grow and nurture trees like our own children instead and thus started our campaign to grow trees. I used to work as a daily wage labourer and used the money from there to grow these trees. I would work in the morning and plant trees in the afternoon. Now they are all well grown,” says Thimakka.

Fifty years after that and with her husband dying in 1987, Thimakka lives all alone today. Thimmakka spends her time tending to her plants, praying and taking care of household chores. However, if there is one regret she has.

“After so much struggle I grew so many trees worth crores. Now the government has taken over the management of these trees, but I haven't got a single penny from the government,” says Thimakka.

The trees Thimakka planted are no longer hers, but she still believes they are her children, and she makes it a point to walk along the avenue everyday and caress what she has tended so lovingly.

“I have never missed having kids, I am proud of these trees. They are my children,” says Thimakka.

An ecologist had once said that one could gauge the wealth of a country, its real wealth, by its tree cover.

And by that yardstick, Hulikal is indeed very wealthy and Thimakka deserves a credit for her efforts in doing so.