Category: Food Garden

April & May, Explore & Play

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in Color Combo & Design, Container Garden, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Herbs, Outdoor Classrooms, Outdoor Classrooms, Raised Beds, School Gardens

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

April and May are wonderful months to plan fun garden activities for upcoming school breaks. If you have summer school students, children, nieces and/or nephews, plan a garden. Or arrange a fieldtrip to child-friendly gardens, parks and/or playgrounds. These landscapes are excellent venues for playtime, nature exploration, and family bonding. Here are some fun ideas to inspire some fun kid-centric adventures in a garden, park, or playground.

  1. SENSORY GARDENS: Build a sensory garden or add sensory plants to an existing garden. Sensory gardens feature plants that stimulate children’s observation skills and imagination. Together, you can choose plants that possess leaves with vibrant colors or leaves with unique shapes. Greenery with notable textures, amazing aromas, delicious fruits, and/or extreme sizes. To stimulate a garden visitor’s auditory senses, choose plants that attract local songbirds or chirping geckos. Some examples are these sensory-stimulating flora are multi-colored San Francisco, 30-meter tall Tipo trees with their unique, lobed leaf shapes, or Ilang-Ilang with fruity fragrance that travels throughout the afternoon. Other examples are native sensory marvels are trees like Bangkal (Nauclea orientalis), Katmon (Dillenia philippinensis), and Almaciga (Agathis philippinensis). For more kid-centric plant combinations and sensory garden design suggestions, check out:
The sensory garden design above features plants like colorful ornamental gingers, duwaw, trellised passionfruit vines, potted native berries, and potted ilang-ilang.

2. EDIBLE APRIL & MAY: With your enthusiastic students and youth gardeners, you can plant herbs, berries and vegetables. They can use my planting calendar to choose what seeds to plant and add to the garden. If you want to learn more about April berries to plant, check out April’s Dessert Garden. During these hot and dry months, use smart water conservation techniques like mulching, drip irrigation, and if you saved water during the rainy season, it’s time to use your rainwater storage tanks. You can also check out your local children’s gardening events through facebook groups, churches, or barangay hall events.

>>>>Download planting calendar
>>>>Download cebu pollinator plants

3. COOL, STARRY NIGHT GARDENS: Plan a garden that you and the kids can enjoy at night. Sometimes summer days can be too hot. Evenings in the garden, under the stars, are much more enjoyable. Add fragrant, night-blooming water lilies, vines and shrubs to your garden. Choose shrubs that emit strong evening fragrances. Night fragrant orchids, cacao flowers and Dama de Noche jasmine are excellent examples. Or plant a raised bed with night-blooming cacti and flowers that attract the often-overlooked nocturnal pollinators. Flowers like night-blooming phlox, angel’s trumpet, Queen of the Night cactus, honeysuckle, and evening primrose invite amazing local bats and moths. These nighttime gardens are great spots for children to run around and explore. They are also beautiful venues for outdoor parties with the whole family.

Enjoy the rest of April and hope you have a blooming start to May!

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March Moments of Serenity

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in Color Combo & Design, Container Garden, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Herbs, Therapeutic Garden

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

For many of us and our loved ones, March has been punctuated by international conflicts and frightful world news. Thankfully, nature is respite. Despite humanity’s conflicts, this month, in our forests and gardens, nature continues to bring warm yellow sunrises, flowering fruit trees in the afternoon, and moonlit evenings. The gardens momentarily shield us from the chatter of work pressure and overwhelming world events. I’m grateful for the ever-flowing peace plants offer in times of grief, anxiety, and confusion. Even neuroscience studies confirm our brains relax when we gaze at grand tree canopies overhead, slowly walk barefoot through a garden, or breathe in sweet floral aromas.

In this article, I also share excerpts from the Serene Garden from my book, Inflourish: Cebu Garden Designs. I hope this inspires you to briefly escape your phone apps. March in the garden to mellow out. Spend a peaceful day in nature or go build your own version of the Serene Garden.

In the Serene Garden design below, you can lounge amongst raised beds filled with bountiful Citrus trees, flowering Kamuning, Orchids, and other gorgeous greenery. This design can be installed on a backyard deck, roof space or patio. Beyond the greenery, a small relaxing pond is adorned with horsetail reeds and gabi. This garden elegantly combines edible vegetation with living décor. Apart from lounging, you can harvest seasonal Limes and Limonsito. Or pick a romantic bouquet of Saging-saging flowers, fern leaves, and Kamuning blossoms to brighten someone’s day.

Serene Garden design with detailed plant maps below.

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Tree Leaf Treasures

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in agroforestry, Container Garden, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Herbs, wildlife garden

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

How is the start of 2026 so far? I hope it’s been joyous and full of growth. I’m happy to return after taking a little pause from blogging. The past two months were full of rest, infrastructural rebuilding, and recovery from the 2025 storms and earthquakes.

In this month’s article, let’s take a fun tour of the multi-beneficial and ultra-resilient edible trees in Healing Present. Balimbing, Gumamela, Kamunggay, Mulberry, and Curry Leaf trees and shrubs produce tasty leaves throughout the year. These evergreen trees and shrubs can produce low-growing limbs short enough for me to easily harvest their leaves. Plus, the readily available tree leaves are delicious substitutes when ordinary vegetables are unavailable, too expensive, or low-quality at the local market.

During the earthquakes, landslides, and typhoon, we temporarily lost road access to markets. Luckily, we could turn to our hardy, nutritious edible trees for an emergency food supply. Yes, we had emergency packaged snacks. Unfortunately, they are vitamin-deficient. They’re also consumed quickly when people are stressed, waiting for electricity, emergency services, or road access.

All of these tree leafy treasures are somewhat mild in flavor and easily absorb a recipe’s sauces and spices. I usually steam, airfry, or boil them. Around the world, they are featured in stews, soups, seafood, roasted meat dishes, and even desserts. With or without a disaster, I love adding the yummy foliage to my meals. They are essential for flavor, fiber, and for my meal sequencing practice.

Everyday, I practice meal sequencing to stop any blood sugar spikes. Tree leaves and vegetables are my daily appetizer. Meal sequencing just means eating an all-vegetable appetizer, then munching on proteins and fats second, and then completing the meal with starchy foods, carbs, or desserts. So basically I’ve stopped eating starches like bread and rice at the beginning of my meals. If you’re interested in learning about meal sequencing, here are a few recent articles on how it regulates blood sugar and natural hunger hormones: 1, 2, 3.

Conceptual layout of a seated area with potted shrubs and a lush garden border of edible trees and wild groundcovers.

Here I’ll focus on the delicious trees and shrubs at Healing Present that

  • produce fast-growing leaves,
  • form tall trees or low-growing shrubs for an easy harvest,
  • adapt to most soils
  • enhance wildlife and bird habitat, and
  • can resist floods and storm winds when planted properly.

Apart from the obvious nutrition and ecological functions, all the trees below are integral to ancient traditional medicine and present-day pharmaceutical research. They are truly beneficial for our health and environment.

Kamunggay (Moringa olifera)

Kamunggay is a versatile vegetable in soups like Utan Bisaya and other Filipino stews. The feathery leaves and flowers flavor my soups, juices, steamed dishes, sauces, and pestos. When I drank my first kamunggay smoothie, I learned the raw leaves become sweeter when blended. What a delight! Without blending, the taste remains mild or peppery.

Kamunggay leaves are widely used for water purification, beverages, savory meals, desserts, and packaged health snacks. If you’re unfamiliar with Kamunggay, use it like spinach. Outside of my kitchen, people in Latin America and other parts of Asia eat it raw or powdered. Different countries prefer to consume the leaf, flower, root, bark or the seed depending on the desired flavor and recipes.

Balimbing (Averrhoa carambola)

Balimbing leaves tend to live in the shadow of their popular golden yellow star-shaped fruit. I never underestimate the bright-green leaflets. They are thick, crisp leaves that flourish throughout the year at Healing Present. I also like to stir-fry them with garlic, ginger, spring onions and pepper. The leaflets can season steamed fish and roasted chicken dishes. And, of course, the fruit is enjoyed in desserts and drinks. Beyond my dinner plate, the leaves are commonly used in traditional medicine in Brazil, Malaysia and China.

Gumamela (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis)

Gumamela leaves are one of my favorite leafy greens. In Healing Present, the tooth-edged, glossy leaves regularly grow to 10-inches in width. I prefer to chop them before adding them to a bit of boiling water. As you stir the leaves, a natural thickening gel appears. The gel is a natural version of adding corn starch to thicken soup or chop suey. I also consume the flowers for added color and texture. Marveled for their beauty and medicinal properties, Gumamela was also consumed in ancient African herbal treatments, Ayurvedic teas, and traditional Chinese medicine.

Curry leaf (Murraya koenigii)

In Healing Present, curry shrubs grow around the greenhouse, on our terraced gardens, and in our raised beds. Many of them multiply and grow without our initiative. Curry leaves make delicious air fried vegetable chips. Add a spice mix, sauce, or oil when frying or roasting the curry leaf chips. I also add them to vegetable stews, lentil dishes, rice, and fish. Around South and Southeast Asia, curry leaves are featured in raw or cooked recipes. Apart from their culinary roles, they are integrated in chronic illness treatments, religious ceremonies, and cultural traditions.

Mulberry (Morus spp.)

Mulberry leaves are appetizing greens for my daily soups and sauté vegetables. I also like to grill chicken or beef cuts wrapped in glossy mulberry leaves. You can add the young leaves to vegetable platters, sandwiches, stir fries, meat stews, and seafood dishes. While, older leaves can be air fried for chips and dried for teas. At the farm we enjoy a mix of red and black mulberry varieties.

In traditional Chinese medicine, the mulberry root, leaf, seed, and leaf are used to treat conditions.

So if you’re looking for multi-beneficial trees that are easily adaptable and serve an emergency or year-round food reserve, consider growing these 5 tree/shrub species. Find nurseries that sell them as mature saplings so you don’t have to wait too long for your regular supply of life-giving leafy greens.

Photos of Leaves from Wikimedia Commons.

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Genuinely Ginger Gardens

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in Color Combo & Design, Container Garden, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Raised Beds, School Gardens, Therapeutic Garden, wildlife garden

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

Ginger is commonly known as a popular spice in delicious dishes like Kinilaw and drinks like Salabat. But for gardeners, landscape designers, and tropical plant enthusiasts, gingers encompass diverse plants from botanical families like Zingiberaceae and Costaceae. Gingers and their relatives can be striking features in Cebu’s potted gardens and footpath borders. You can grow gingers in lush, dense groups along a path. Gingers can grow from 3 to 6 feet. Depending on how you prune them, the swaying stems and plump green leaves can shade walkways and soften garden edges.

Gingers’ foliage are bejeweled with stunning floral displays. Their multi-colored blossoms resemble painted pine cones, graceful orchids, butterfly wings, bromeliad spikes, and many more marvelous configurations. In the image below, you’ll see a gorgeous sample of native and naturalized ginger flowers found in Philippine’s forests and gardens.

The flowers above belong to: A) a spiral ginger called Insulin plant (Helliana speciosa); B) Adelmeria alpina; C) Vanoverberghia rubrobracteata; D) Etlingera fimbriobractea ; E) Alpinia haenkei ; F) Zingiber zerumbet; G) Adelmeria gigantifolia; and H) Turmeric (Curcuma longa).

Growing Gingers. Gingers can be planted from small pieces of their roots. These pieces or rhizome segments must have buds to successfully grow. In Healing Present, we usually plant them during the rainy season. You can start them in individual pots or raised beds. Once the seedlings have strong stems, you can transfer them to different parts of your garden. Some gardeners, without many pests, press the ginger pieces directly into the soil. The pieces are planted about 3 inches deep and at least 7 inches apart. I like to grow them in dense clumps so they make a bold visual impact when they grow taller. In general, gingers prefer Cebu’s humidity, partial shade and indirect light. For the best results, grow them in soil that drains well.

Below are different locations where we planted ginger. Some gingers are in a shaded balcony or thriving under the canopy of a native cinnamon tree. Others are next to a garden wall that blocks direct sunlight. Other ginger relatives are in pots next to ponds. All these locations receive frequent rain or irrigation. They also block constant heat and direct sun exposure.

With pruning, gingers are pretty low-maintenance. Just remove any dead or damaged stems during the year. Those dead brown canes or stems make great additions to your compost.

Here are a few more design tips to help you integrate an abundance of gingers in your garden:

>> A stairway in Healing Present’s farm lined with a variety of ginger relatives like insulin plants, turmeric, and ginger lilies. The parallel islands of ginger are complemented with ferns and Saging-saging (canna lilies). Complement your ginger islands with moisture-loving accents like ferns, lilies, and ornamental bananas.
>>Don’t add a thin line or skinny row of plants along your walkway. Add wide bands or clusters of gingers. With regular, moist conditions gingers can grow to 4 feet or more in width. So it won’t take long to grow a wealth of ginger. Wider groups of gingers add verdant impact and visual harmony.
>>Since gingers love partial shade, consider adding them to a shaded path. In Healing Present’s farm, we frequently decorate a path with a passionfruit pergola overhead. Then, we plant gingers on both sides of the stepping stones.

Hope this inspires you to beautify your garden paths with some gorgeous ginger additions!

First image of ginger flowers courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Co’s Digital Flora of the Philippines.

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Treetop Adventures

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in Color Combo & Design, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Raised Beds, School Gardens, Therapeutic Garden, wildlife garden

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

As a child, it felt magical to play in a treehouse, feel closer to the sky, and capture a bird’s eye view. I was overjoyed and curious. Treehouses and tree decks are some of the best settings for imaginative play, relaxation, and daily connection with nature. Today, I’ll share some fun ideas for gardens that enhance treehouses and tree decks. The inspiration can enrich a treehouse or deck in a backyard, community garden, or a local school. Feel free to incorporate these planting combinations into personal projects or share them with community members looking to improve a treetop design.

A treehouse adorned with a succulent greenroof above borders of floral shrubs, colorful foliage, and aromatic groundcovers.

Vibrant Foliage & Flowers. Planting floral and foliar color are beautiful ways to attract interest and highlight your treetop structure. You can concentrate on a particular color combination, motif, floral scent, or educational theme to help determine your plant palette. Or you can select plants based on particular height and space requirements. With this criteria, floral groundcovers, shrubs, and a few trees may suit your site. With cozier spaces, potted plants, epiphytes, and vines are preferable.

Or get creative! Add a shallow raised bed of flowering succulents on the rooftop of your treehouse. Or add a succulent border or raised boxes on the perimeter of your tree deck. If your site is larger it space, add additional flowering fruit trees. And don’t forget colorful shrubs as an option. San franciscos (Codiaeum spp.), Mais-mais (Dracaena spp.), cordyline lilies (Cordyline spp.), and Mayana (Coleus spp.) pop with deep maroons, golds, hot pinks, and other rich hues. Remember to observe your site’s soil conditions and sun exposure to further refine your plant selection. Here are some vibrant floral exemplars that grow well in my area:

  • Waling Waling orchid (Vanda sanderiana)
  • Philippine ground orchid (Spathoglottis plicata)
  • Rose Mallow shrub (Hibiscus moscheutos)
  • Sampaguita shrub (Jasminum sambac)
  • Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia spp.)
  • Heliconia spp.
  • Torch ginger (Etlingera elatior)
  • Ylang Ylang tree (Cananga odorata)
  • Siar tree (Peltophorum pterocarpum)
  • Narra tree (Pterocarpus indicus)
  • Malapapaya tree (Polyscias nodosa)
  • Bani tree (Milletia pinnata)
  • Binunga tree (Macaranga tanarius)
A tree deck supported by an old Acacia surrounded by big-leafed, shade-loving plants and ferns. The Acacia is also adorned with vines and fern epiphytes.

Trees with Shade-loving accents. Adding trees with shade accents can also enrich your tree house or tree deck. In time, this combination will turn into a shady, cool respite from the heat. Your shade-loving accent can be big-leaved gabi, palmettos, Colocosia spp., monsteras, and ferns while the native trees can have sprawling crowns, graceful palm leaves, compact treetops, and/or seasonally produce fruit. Other tree species could be Alibangbang (Bauhinia malabarica), native bamboos, Panalipan (Diospyros tenuipes), and Maritima (Vatica maritima). Alternatively, you can focus on adding compact fruit trees or larger fruit trees like native figs like Dakit, Lagnob, and other Ficus spp. Other suitable fruit-bearing choices could be Banana varieties, Avocado, Nangka, and Balimbing.

A field of heliconias and birds of paradise with a background of fruit tree accents leading to a treehouse.

Trees that can support Houses or Decks. Most of this article focusses on enhancing an existing treehouse or deck with a surrounding garden. If you need advice for the right tree to support a new treehouse or tree deck, ask an engineer, experienced builder, or treehouse designer.

There are many ways to build a treehouse. Sometimes the entire structure is attached to the tree. Others build structures with no weight on the tree. Additionally, builders incorporate gaps in the platform and roof so the tree can grow through the house and deck. In my experience, treehouses are made with healthy, mature, multi-trunked hardwood trees. In Cebu, old Fig trees, old Mango trees, mature Yakal, Ipil, Lawaan, Narra, and Acacia are used in tree decks or treehouse projects.

Have fun creating and enjoy your future treetop adventures!

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