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There's a word similar to "rewilding" and "reforestation/afforestation" used to describe adding greenery to a barren landscape. I think it might be related to the word "verdure", but I'm not sure. It's on the tip of my tongue. Does anyone know it?

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  • Example sentence?
    – Laurel
    Commented Oct 24, 2018 at 2:10
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    William Caxton used the verb verdoying to mean waxing green in his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from the French verb verdoyer: “A grene medowe full of herbes verdoying or wexyng grene.” But today the word verdoy sees little currency as a verb, having been relegated to the formal language of heraldry and demoted from its verbness. I suspect this was not the word that had been on the tip of your tongue here, but I’m quite willing to be wrong about that suspicion. :)
    – tchrist
    Commented Oct 24, 2018 at 3:11

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re-greening (MW)1

transitive verb. : to make green again especially : to restore (barren, degraded, or deforested land) to a healthy ecological state by planting vegetation (such as trees, shrubs, grasses, or sustainable crops) often in conjunction with improvements in soil fertility and water retention …

Usage:

Environmentalists are trying to minimise the damage through a climate adaptation programme involving communities farming at over 3,000 metres to regreen the denuded mountains. (Fragile Land) Copyright 2014 The Killid Group

1 meta: Some issues with the MW site from this terminal, so not providing a link right now. See instead the ODOL:

verb
with object To make green again; especially to re-establish plant growth.
Origin: Early 17th century; earliest use found in Joshua Sylvester (d. 1618), poet and translator. From re- + green.

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