In 1996, a farmer named Sadiman looked at the dry, cracked hills near his village and saw something others did not. Most of his neighbors thought planting trees on the bare, burned slopes of Gendol Hill in Wonogiri, Central Java, was pointless. Twenty-four years later, Sadiman had planted roughly 11,000 banyan and ficus trees across 250 hectares — an area roughly the size of 350 football fields — and springs that had been dry for years began flowing again.
The water now reaches homes and irrigates farms in several villages that once struggled through droughts. Farmers who could only grow one harvest per year thanks to unreliable rainfall can now harvest crops two or three times annually. Sadiman turned a reforestation project into an agricultural intervention, one sapling at a time.
So why did he choose banyan and ficus trees specifically? It was not a guess. Both trees have deep root systems that grow down into the soil and create channels. When rain falls, instead of running off the surface and washing away, the water follows these channels underground, where it replenishes groundwater and eventually feeds springs. Scientists call this process groundwater recharge, and it is well documented in forestry research. The U.S. Forest Service notes that forests store water on the landscape and roughly 180 million Americans rely on forests for their drinking water. A 2024 study published in the journal Water found that planting native tree species in tropical regions like Java improves water availability more effectively than fast-growing commercial plantations. Banyan and ficus trees are native to Java, meaning Sadiman picked species that fit the science before the science caught up.
For years, Sadiman worked largely alone. Villagers thought him strange. Some believed spirits lived in banyan trees and wanted them away from houses. He became something of an outcast. To keep the project going, he swapped his goats for saplings and sold cloves and jackfruit from a small nursery he ran on the side. He was not watching springs appear after two years or five years. Tree roots need time to mature and spread. Groundwater recovery is slow. But he kept planting anyway.
The story of one farmer with a shovel and a lot of patience matters because it shows how the choices of a single person can reshape local water conditions. It took 24 years, 11,000 trees, and the right species planted in the right place. Springs that vanished long ago are flowing again.