Swami Prem Parivartan — "Peepal Baba" — has spent nearly 50 years mobilising volunteers across India to plant, protect and sustain millions of trees. His trust estimates it has restored more than 270,000 hectares and planted or preserved about 26 million trees. Parivartan prioritises soil restoration and long-term care over headline counts, using grassroots action and social media to expand a practical stewardship movement.
Peepal Baba — India's 'Tree Father' Planting a Greener Future
Swami Prem Parivartan, better known as "Peepal Baba" or "tree father", and his teams became one of India's largest grassroots planting movements (Arun SANKAR)
With Delhi's choking haze overhead, Swami Prem Parivartan — widely known as "Peepal Baba" or the "tree father" — presses a young sapling into the soil, continuing nearly five decades of work to revive India's vanishing green cover.
At 60, Parivartan has turned a childhood love of trees into one of the country's largest grassroots restoration movements. He rubbed earth between his fingers and packed damp mulch around the sapling's base as he described planting yet another tree among the millions his trust says it has planted or protected.
"We did not wait for governments to act. We gathered friends, volunteers, wanderers, believers," he said. "When people ask, 'How many?' I answer, 'As many as it takes to give the Earth a second chance.'"
Cooling Towers
Parivartan's organisation estimates it has restored vegetation across more than 270,000 hectares (about 2,700 sq km) — an area roughly twice the size of Delhi — and says it has planted or preserved about 26 million trees. But he stresses that numbers are not the main point.
"I have never counted shade by digits," he says. "It's not only about planting a tree; it is about how you manage the land where the tree grows and make sure it survives."
His personal connection to trees began early: he planted his first saplings, including a peepal (Ficus religiosa), on his 11th birthday. Peepal trees — with their wide roots and cultural significance — have long offered shade for village meetings, temples and markets, which he evocatively calls "cooling towers of human hope" in his 2026 autobiography.
Touch the Soil
After university he set aside an academic career and travelled India by scooter to encourage people to plant and care for trees. From notebooks he kept, he estimates having covered nearly 540,000 kilometres — enough to circle the globe more than 13 times — sleeping in temples, village homes, bus shelters or beneath the trees he planted.
Long sustained by individual and community donations, the trust has in recent years drawn larger corporate donors to scale up its activities. With more than 1.6 million Instagram followers and a growing volunteer network, Parivartan now combines on-the-ground effort with social media outreach.
His philosophy has broadened from simply planting trees to restoring the soil that sustains them. "Every civilisation that respected its soil prospered; those that ignored it perished," he says. "We build skyscrapers high enough to touch the clouds, but we have forgotten how to kneel and touch the soil."
For Parivartan, the work remains elemental: plant a tree, nurture it, and ensure it lives. His message is simple, persistent and actionable — local stewardship, steady care, and long-term thinking to give the planet a second chance.
Help us improve.
