A Man with a Shovel: The Trees That Hélio Built

In the eastern reaches of São Paulo, where the urban landscape begins to blur at the edges, a man walks among the trees he has planted. He is seventy-four, wears dusty boots and a beat-up straw hat, and carries a shovel over one shoulder like a soldier reporting for duty. The trees tower above him now—Ipês, Jequitibás, Guapuruvus—casting long shadows on the jogging path that threads through Tiquatira Linear Park. He planted the first of them more than twenty years ago, in a place no one thought was worth saving.

Back then, the stretch of land along the Tiquatira stream was mostly a dump. An illegal parking lot had colonized the space; drug users took shelter in what passed for brush. The city had abandoned it, as it had done with many places in São Paulo’s periphery—what Brazilians call the “Zonas de Esquecimento,” or “zones of forgetting.” It was exactly the kind of place Hélio da Silva couldn’t forget.

Guerrilla Gardening with a Ledger

He had no experience in arboriculture or ecology. He was, at the time, a food industry executive nearing retirement, the kind of man who carried spreadsheets in his briefcase and planted begonias in his backyard on weekends. But something about the dereliction of the park offended him. “It felt like São Paulo was giving up,” he told me recently, as we walked through his park. “And I couldn’t stand that.”

One Saturday, he brought two hundred saplings and a spade to the site. He dug, alone, until his fingers cramped. By Sunday night, he had created a tiny forest. On Monday, a local business owner—upset that his impromptu parking lot was now shaded—pulled the saplings out. So Hélio planted four hundred more.

“I told myself: now I’ll plant five thousand,” he said, eyes twinkling under his hat. “I don’t know if it was anger or joy. Maybe both.”

From Joke to Forest

Over two decades, Hélio planted more than 41,000 trees. He kept meticulous records in a notebook: species, date, GPS coordinates. He paid for the seedlings himself—nearly R$40,000 reais (roughly $8,000 USD) in 2023 alone—and fertilized each one with compost from his kitchen. He treated the young trees like children. “You have to trim their nails, give them vaccines,” he joked, brushing dust from a flowering jacaranda.

At first, the city ignored him. Then, it tolerated him. Finally, it celebrated him. In 2008, the São Paulo municipal government formalized the space as Parque Linear Tiquatira—the city’s first linear park, now a 3.2-kilometer strip of green slicing through a district long written off by urban planners. Hélio, who began as an amateur gardener sneaking onto public land, had become something rarer: a civic icon with no office, no title, and no staff. Just a shovel, a notebook, and a forest.

On a recent Wednesday, under a canopy of pink Ipês in bloom, Hélio paused to chat with a jogger. They exchanged greetings like old friends. Everyone here knows him. A woman pushing a stroller waved from the distance. “He planted all these trees,” she told her toddler. “So we can breathe.”

São Paulo Breathes Unevenly

The science backs her up. Studies by Universidade de São Paulo researchers show that neighborhoods with mature tree cover in the city are up to 8°C cooler than nearby treeless zones during summer heatwaves. Urban trees in São Paulo reduce flood risk, filter pollutants, and provide critical refuge for wildlife—some of which, like capybaras and toucans, have returned to Tiquatira. “We didn’t just plant shade,” Hélio said. “We planted life.”

His park now hosts more than 170 species of trees and over 40 types of birds. Capuchin monkeys have been spotted near the riverbanks. During the pandemic, it served as a rare open-air sanctuary for elderly residents, many of whom were cooped up in dense apartment blocks with little ventilation. One older man, Hélio recalled, broke into tears while thanking him for the “peace” the park gave him. “He said he hadn’t left his apartment in months,” Hélio remembered. “Here, he found oxygen again.”

Yet, despite these benefits, green space in São Paulo is wildly uneven. In affluent neighborhoods like Jardim Paulista or Morumbi, tree canopy is robust, and well-kept parks are within walking distance. In working-class areas like Itaim Paulista, where Tiquatira Park sits, green coverage often dips below 20 percent. According to a recent report by Rede Nossa São Paulo, a local urban think tank, residents in the city’s richest districts have access to five times more green space than those in the poorest.

“São Paulo doesn’t have a green shortage,” urbanist Thiago Santos told me. “It has a green inequality crisis.” He describes parks like Tiquatira as “islands of climate resilience” in an urban sea that is increasingly hostile to the poor. “These are places where the city breathes,” he said. “But they’re still far too rare.”

The Labor We Don’t See

What sets Hélio’s work apart isn’t just its scale or persistence—it’s the fact that he did it quietly, unpaid, and without a foundation, brand, or viral campaign. He didn’t fundraise on Instagram. He didn’t organize a non-profit. “I’m not a movement,” he laughed. “I’m just stubborn.”

In academic circles, there’s a term for what Hélio has done: “invisible civic labor.” It refers to unpaid community work that often fills gaps left by the state—graffiti removal, elder care, volunteer teaching. Environmental versions of it include neighborhood composting, guerrilla gardening, and tree-planting on neglected plots. But it rarely gets acknowledged.

“Civic labor like Hélio’s is the connective tissue of urban life,” said Mariana Arantes, a professor of urban ecology at Fundação Getulio Vargas. “Yet it’s often invisible in planning documents, budgets, and media. We focus on smart cities, big infrastructure, and climate innovation—but forget that care is a form of infrastructure, too.”

Arantes compares Hélio’s park to grassroots reforestation projects in cities like Freetown, Sierra Leone—where residents planted over a million trees through community collectives—or to the “pocket forests” sprouting up across Europe. In France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, residents have adopted the Japanese Miyawaki method to cram dense native mini-forests into schoolyards and vacant lots. New York City has begun piloting similar initiatives in underserved neighborhoods.

But the lesson is always the same: people will plant what governments neglect.

Digging Without Permission

One afternoon, I asked Hélio if he ever imagined his project becoming so big. He shook his head.

“I only thought about the next weekend. Where I’d dig. Which trees would survive.”

The only complaint he offered was about his shoulder—twice operated on due to “tree strain.” His doctor told him to slow down. He didn’t.

“I’m almost 75,” he said, flexing his right hand as if gripping an imaginary shovel. “But I’ll stop when the ground refuses to open.”

That weekend, he planted another hundred saplings.

It’s become almost a joke among neighbors. “You can’t stop him,” said a woman named Lúcia who works at a nearby bakery. “We see him on Saturdays, muddy shoes, sunburned face. He just nods, says: bom dia, and starts digging.”

The Roots We Leave Behind

At city hall, a framed certificate recognizes Hélio da Silva for his “contribution to urban reforestation.” It hangs on a wall near the mayor’s office, above a sleek rendering of São Paulo’s green masterplan. But Hélio’s real reward, he says, is simpler: “When a kid climbs a tree I planted, I feel like I’ve done something good.”

He often jokes that he won’t die—he’ll become part of the forest. “If anyone asks where I went, just point to the trees.”

And then he smiles, as if the idea isn’t a metaphor but a blueprint.