A Guinness World Record was set at Bhadaj on 12 July. Whether it becomes a forest depends on the next three monsoons.
On the morning of 12 July 2026, an open stretch of land at Bhadaj on Ahmedabad’s outskirts held nothing but bare ground. An hour later it held 3.61 lakh saplings.
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation drive set a Guinness World Record, surpassing the previous mark of 3,31,929 trees planted in one hour by Assam’s Forest Department in September 2023.
What Happened at Bhadaj
More than 25,000 volunteers took part, including municipal staff, schoolchildren, NCC cadets, police personnel, residents and members of NGOs and social organisations.
The plantation covered roughly 76,000 square metres and used about 35 indigenous species. Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel were present, and the drive forms part of a wider campaign to plant 1.25 crore trees across the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency and 50 lakh within the municipal corporation area.
Why the Miyawaki Method Was Chosen
The Miyawaki technique, developed by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, plants native species densely rather than spacing them several metres apart.
Competition for sunlight pushes the saplings to grow faster, and a dense multi-layered patch can form in a fraction of the time a conventional plantation takes. Such patches can support birds and insects, absorb carbon dioxide, trap dust and lower local temperatures.
The choice of native species matters to that outcome. Indigenous trees are adapted to local rainfall and soil, and generally need less irrigation once established than ornamental or imported varieties.
The Question the Record Does Not Answer
Environmental researchers have consistently pointed out that planting is the least difficult stage of ecological restoration. Young saplings need regular watering, protection and monitoring through their first years.
Without maintenance systems, survival rates in large plantation drives can fall sharply. The measure of this project will be the count of living trees at Bhadaj in three years, not the count planted in sixty minutes.
The Wise Take
Records are useful because they mobilise people, and 25,000 volunteers on a single patch of ground is not a small civic achievement. The risk is that the record becomes the goal. Indian cities have run many mass plantation drives, and the ones that produced lasting canopy were the ones with a watering budget, a survival audit and someone accountable for the numbers a year later. Ahmedabad has committed to a much larger tree target across the region. Publishing survival data would do more for that target than another hour of planting.
