Green Sakthi: A Revival of Agricultural and Spiritual Wisdom in Tamil Nadu

Green Sakthi was established in 1992 in the rural village of Thirumalaikodi, near Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. Decades of deforestation had stripped the soil of nutrients, diminished biodiversity, and left the surrounding communities vulnerable to heat and water scarcity. A terrain where trees like Kadamba and Sandalwood once stood tall had become silent and sun-scorched. The nearby Kailasa hills were rendered rocky and barren.

The land bore the signs of environmental and cultural exhaustion. A reforesting program was, at one level, an obvious thing to suggest. But what is happening in Thirumalaikodi is distinctive.

Being welcomed to the reforesting, recycling, and farming project Green Sakthi is a spiritual experience from the start.

We enter the nursery, capturing our first glimpses of rows of healthy saplings. My group is warmly invited to stand in a circle so that we can come to ourselves. We bring our attention to our feet on the ground before turning again to the plants, trees, and sunlight overhead. From then on, we are alert not only to the impressive scale of the project but also to the sacred energy that drives its activities.

So, how is this reforesting project tangibly different from any other? What effects does the self-evidently spiritual element produce? After all, restoring the natural environment by planting trees is an activity now undertaken worldwide. Can regarding the land as sacred help?

The Reforesting Challenge and Sacred Sustainability

While reforestation is widely practiced, many large-scale efforts in Tamil Nadu and beyond have failed to make a lasting impact. These failures often share a common problem: they lack community connection, cultural continuity, and spiritual grounding. One high-profile example is Conscious Planet’s 2019 “Cauvery Calling” campaign, a multi-agency, farmer-driven eco-movement that aimed to plant billions of trees along the Cauvery River basin, which spans several states in southern India. Despite noble intentions, the initiative faced sharp criticism from ecologists and local stakeholders. Experts warned that the plan prioritized monoculture plantations and failed to fully assess local biodiversity, water cycles, and land-use traditions. Crucially, communities were not spiritually or culturally engaged with the project.

Without that connection, stewardship was minimal, and skepticism grew among both scientists and residents.

Similarly, in the mid-2000s, Tamil Nadu saw the rise and fall of carbon-credit-driven plantations. These projects utilized economic incentives to plant species such as Eucalyptus and Casuarina, which are fast-growing, non-native trees promoted for their commercial value and carbon sequestration potential. However, they depleted groundwater, disrupted soil ecosystems, and were eventually abandoned when carbon prices fell.

The plantations were engineered from the top down, economically motivated, ecologically disconnected, and spiritually barren.

Such cases illustrate a critical truth: when reforestation treats nature as a commodity rather than a sacred web of life, the effort often fails ecologically, socially, and spiritually.

In contrast, Green Sakthi thrives from a fundamentally different premise. Nature is not managed; it is revered. Trees are not tools; they are temples.

The project is being carried out under the guiding principle that forests are ecosystems and sacred sanctuaries where life and spirit coalesce. This worldview transforms reforestation into ritual and makes caring for the land an act of reverence.
The sacred is not symbolic — it is a sustaining mechanism.

Restoring the Physical and the Spiritual Environment

Planting over two million trees in and around Thirumalaikodi, a project involving people from schoolchildren to farmers, has rejuvenated the land with a deliberate focus on planting native and sacred trees.

Species such as Spanish Cherry, White Sandalwood, Kadamba, Champa, Mango, Jackfruit, and Jamun restore biodiversity and spiritual continuity. These trees have been selected not only for their ecological value but also for their significance in South Indian devotional and medicinal traditions.

The dramatic change and deeper approach are part of a broader sacred story.
Thirty or so years ago, a child of Vellore was recognized as the incarnation of the goddess Narayani. Sri Sakthi Amma had moved to Thirumalaikodi due to the place’s rich spiritual history. Today, Amma is as actively involved in the reforesting project as in the other accomplishments of this spiritual boom town — for the holistic vision also has a precise social dimension.

Alongside the reforesting, the area now boasts two schools and a general hospital. Over the same quarter century, a large temple complex grew. The centerpiece features a gleaming golden shrine. Sri Lakshmi Narayani, as it is called, is currently visited by ten thousand people a day.

The sacred and practical is integral, explains Nathalie Latham, Green Sakthi Director of Development and Program Operations.

“India is formed by Vedic culture, which at heart fosters an awareness of interconnectedness,” she says. The worldview can be put simply: “We are all one with everything. We are connected to the trees, with the air, with the soil — much as a tree itself manifestly connects the air and the soil.”

Conversely, nothing is separate. That is basic. “It is not as if we say we have nature and let us bring in something spiritual. No — nature is divine, divine is nature.”

Similarly, every atom is said to carry sacred energy and physical form, and this is the meaning of the word “Sakthi”: life force. “This life force, this Sakthi, exists within every being, and so connecting with nature is also connecting with our own spirit,” Latham continues.

Actively engaging with that energy makes all the difference in this reforestation success, and the work’s extent is impressive. As part of its ongoing efforts, the nursery donates 30,000 plants annually to local growers. Last year alone, it collaborated with up to 300 farmers, not just providing plants but also, crucially, asking what plants they needed. That conversation encourages farmers to help each other and deepens the sacred element, explains Sanjani R, Green Sakthi Supervisor (in Tamil culture, the first initial of the father’s name is used as a surname).

Countering Harmful Trends and Sparking Social Change

Green Sakthi’s moral support and reconnection with Vedic culture also help counter a trend in which farmers are tempted away from the land by the prospect of jobs in nearby, burgeoning cities. “Poverty in the region is a major issue, and we are giving local people practical and spiritual hope,” Sanjani continued. “For example, we provide training in several different farming systems so that farmers can work out how farming can bring them stability and security.”

The project is sparking nothing short of a social revolution, a phenomenon that is also evident in another facet of Green Sakthi’s work: its impact on women.

Approximately 70 percent of Green Sakthi workers are women, including 184, five of whom hold leadership roles. This is significant because, traditionally, women in this part of India are not offered an education and, even when they do secure one, face social pressure not to work outside of the home.

However, by having work, they are not only able to contribute financially to support their families, but they also free their children to go to school. The upshot is a virtuous spiral out of poverty through development.

“Many of the children in the schools are the first generation in their families to receive an education. This equips them to progress agricultural practices in the future,” Latham explains. “Educating one child in a family transforms the entire family.”

Reaching out to future generations starts young as children from the schools of Thirumalaikodi plant trees as part of their education. At one level, this teaches them basic agriculture — how to handle plants, water roots, and space saplings — as well as the names of trees in both English and Tamil. However, the experience is also one of placing their hands in the dirt, which is simultaneously opening their souls to nature. “If they feel this spiritual connection when young, they will want to protect nature later,” Latham says.

Environmental Proximity to Worship

The holistic philosophy is compelling. My group planted some saplings with a class of children, placing our hands in the dirt, and the joy elicited by the activity was evident. And then there are the effects of proximity to a bustling, working temple. Within a few hundred meters of the nursery, priests perform pujas and chant mantras for much of the day.

The impact of that worship is at least partly material: the recycling part of the project produces composted soil on a substantial scale. This involves collecting waste from the temples’ activities, as well as from local restaurants and hotels. However, the impact again extends beyond practical matters to the less tangible yet equally impactful.

The trees could be said to be nurtured by sacred and literal watering. The difference that makes has not been measured scientifically; Latham says she would be glad to test it, though she simply hasn’t the resources. But she is sure of it. “What I can say is that the trees grow much faster than anywhere else I have seen,” she explains. “I have been working here and visiting elsewhere for 16 years and witnessed that difference repeatedly.”

In the Vedic understanding, chanting resonates with the five elements of the natural world. Mantras channel energy into the world because they come from nature. Indeed, the hills surrounding the temple and the town contain caves in which ancient sages are said to have meditated on nature and received mantras. Mantras are themselves a form of sacred recycling: receiving energy from the divine and returning that back to the divine.

This type of wisdom is partly known in the Western World. For example, biodynamic farming is commonly deployed in European vineyards, a mode of work that may derive from older Vedic insights. However, another facet of this understanding is that trees are considered yantras.

In a temple, a yantra is a design based on sacred geometry traced on the ground or etched in metal or stone. The interlocking stars and floral shapes absorb and hold spiritual energy, which is why they are a core part of temples. Trees are another form of yantra, which is why sages, including the Buddha, meditate under trees; they benefit from the meditative power of the arboreal yantra. “The trunk is a central channel, and the branches reach out capturing solar energy, which is at once physical and spiritual,” Latham says. The work of the nursery and the temple are, therefore, fundamentally connected as a collaboration with the work of the divine.

A personal as well as practical and sacred story

A further part of what persuaded Latham of this efficacy is more personal.

She has benefited immensely from Green Sakthi psychologically and spiritually because sometime after she had first visited Thirumalaikodi, she contracted aggressive cancer that required invasive radiation treatment. That left her physically depleted and in a deep depression for two years. “I came here to recover and was given this reforesting project by Amma,” she explains. “Nature is always reaching up to the light and life. Being immersed in this place was, therefore, a perfect antidote. Drawing from nature was a very profound experience for me.”

I can testify to that potential. My visit to Green Sakthi provided an unforgettable glimpse into this spiritual education, where I experienced the divine in nature and nature in the divine. “Putting your hands in the soil can feel like a revelation, particularly for folk from cities,” Latham says. “An awakening happens when planting trees and taking care of the seedlings. I’ve seen it again and again.”

But this is not just a personal experience or a tale of a sustainable, ongoing reforesting project.

Green Sakthi ensures long-term community stewardship, biodiversity protection, and microclimate regulation by rooting ecological restoration in spiritual reverence. Over the next 20 years, the plan is to create more forests throughout Tamil Nadu, each rooted in the sacred ecology and a site of healing for the earth and its people.

The results are having an extraordinary impact on this part of Tamil Nadu. The evidence from other projects, which have struggled or failed, suggests that a vibrant redevelopment of the region would not be possible without the integration of reverence and restoration. In Thirumalaikodi, the forest is not only coming back to life. The trees are remembering their sacred purpose.

By Mark Vernon