Peaches, pomegranates, apricots, figs, mulberries, grapes - these were the fruits of my childhood.

My grandmother's yard had no tree; the vine had long been replaced with a washing line - we only had a front hedge, shrubs and flowers. However, there was enough fruit in the neighbourhood for a sumptuous summer salad.

Some households in the area even had tiny vegetable gardens with morogo (spinach), pumpkin and big, juicy tomatoes.

Our yard was divided from our neighbour's on the right by a good dose of neighbourliness: I cleaned our toilet, then our neighbour's; I cleaned our stoep, then our neighbour's, as part of household chores.

With the fence long down, it was not unusual for me to lie under my neighbour's vines on a lazy, Sunday afternoon, plucking one bunch of green grapes after a bunch of red ones - or feasting on soft apricots which had fallen on the grass.

The small nectarine tree next to the tap bore sweet, juicy fruit, which were snatched by the neighbourhood children long before they were bursting with full flavour.

It must have been dreams of a world full of trees - where children are climbing one tree after another, where no child would go hungry, no family would starve if we planted enough trees and vegetables - a world that Kenya's Wangari Maathai envisioned when she started her Green Belt Movement.

It is a more pleasant, healthier and safer world.

One by one . the trees of my childhood were chopped down.

My neighbour's nectarine tree - which also gave me shelter from the sweltering Mamelodi heat when I was polishing the brass vases, curtain rings and rods - was cut down to a stump.

Our other neighbour's mulberry tree was cut down to make way for a back room.

Figs, apricot, and pomegranate trees, and their roots, were dug out and the yards covered with cement. Few trees have survived this concretisation. Even grass was not spared this fate.

The expression "the grass is always greener on the other side" has been replaced by "the slate is always shinier on the other side".

Childhood memories buried under back rooms, shacks and concrete slabs.

Chopping trees, digging out the grass, cementing the yard has become such a big thing in the township.

With mine dumps in every corner of Johannesburg, you would think that Sowetans, and other township folk, would plant a tree to reduce the dust, for fresher air and to beautify the township.

Africa's first woman Nobel laureate bemoaned the tree felling.

She said: "There's a general culture in this country to cut all the trees. It makes me so angry because everyone is cutting and no one is planting."

It is this culture of cutting trees that is turning our townships into brown, dusty, filthy, impoverished, hazardous slums.

To paraphrase poet Caecilius Statius, Maathai planted enough trees to benefit generations.

She believed that: "It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees."

As the world mourns the death of Maathai, whose civil society group, the Green Belt Movement, has planted more than 40million trees in 34 years, I found myself in awe of her simple, but profound, understanding of the role of trees in our lives.

What's the little thing that we can do to make a big difference in our townships?

We can start encouraging every household in the townships and informal settlements to plant at least one tree and nurture it.

As Maathai said: "Anybody can dig a hole and plant a tree."