1.
GV. Party planting trees.
0.05

2.
LV. Miss Purdie and party digging holes.
0.09

3.
SV & CU.Planting trees.
0.17

4.
CU. Stamping earth around tree.
0.24

5.
SV. Miss Purdie watering tree.
0.27

6.
LV. Miss Purdie digging hole with pick.
0.31

7.
SV. Miss Purdie planting tree.
0.40

8.
GV. Arab worker scatters fertiliser.
0.46

9.
GV. One of the four signs erected by Miss Purdie.
0.51

10.
LV. Miss Purdie and Mr. Dada lock at eucalyptus tree planted in 1960.
1.00

11.
SCU. Ditto.
1.04

12.
LV. Miss Purdie talks to Mr. Dada, trees in ???G.
1.10



Initials PC/S/AW/CW



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: An English woman, Miss Campbell-Purdie, has recently been successful in growing trees in the arid sends of the Sahara Desert - an achievement which seemed almost impossible.

With the idea of halting the march of the ever-growing Sahara, she started planting trees - mostly eucalyptus and acacias - at Tiznit, Southern Morocco, in mid-January, 1960. Of the 700 planted, some 400-450 survived and grew. Miss Campbell-Purdia was also successful with one of the five rows of castor beans that she planted.

Lack of finance prevented her from watering the trees - the castor beans were not watered at all - and the lateness in planting caused them to get only 4 1/2 inches of rain.

With these heartening results, Miss Campbell-Purdia intends to grow a much greater variety of trees and crops during 1961. She says that a green belt of trees all round the Sahara - said to be a region of forests in time past - could be widened year by year, and, with simultaneous planting out from cases, the whole vast area could be reclaimed and once again become fertile land.