Mangaluru: Environmentalist Saalumarada Thimmakka has pinned her hopes on the coalition government in the State that she might get her own house this time.

Speaking to presspersons at St. Aloysius College after inaugurating Vrukshanjali, an awareness programme on conserving and promoting greenery, here on Tuesday, she said that now she lived in a rented house in Bengaluru.

Her appeal to the government to provide her with a house had failed to evoke any response.

Later, addressing a gathering at the college, she said that among the saplings she had planted was a banyan tree which was 70 years old now. Ms. Thimmakka said that as she was childless she and her husband, Chikkaiah, began planting and tending to banyan saplings on a four-kilometre stretch of road between Hulikal and Kudur in Magadi taluk of Ramnagaram district.

She asked all to plant saplings and increase greenery. “One has nothing to lose by planting saplings,” she said and added that many birds took shelter in the trees.

Earlier, she planted Kadamba and Suragi plants at the St. Mother Teresa Shantivana in the college. Environmental activist Dinesh Holla and college principal Praveen Martis were present.