Tag: Cebu

Plants of Our Past

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in Container Garden, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Outdoor Classrooms, Outdoor Classrooms, Therapeutic Garden

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

In previous articles like Lola’s Bam-i Garden and Binignit Garden, I showed gardens that grow ingredients from a favorite family recipe or beloved holiday delicacy. Yes, the gardens were a convenient supply of useful herbs, spices and vegetables. There were also window into your personal history and culture. These same recipe gardens can transform into meaningful food heritage gardens in schools and communities. They can become outdoor classrooms or community gathering spaces. You can grow plants that represent monumental events from culture and food history.

Since plants are the basis of our life, history, and culture, garden can house a collection of edible ingredients, building materials, textiles, medicines, fuels, technologies, and more. In the a backyard, a school site, or community venue, people can showcase plants’ ancient functions and enduring roles. Through themed tours, oral history projects, student group activities, speaker presentations, or well-researched plant placards. Together, communities can use these heritage gardens to protect cultural traditions and foster curiosity about our environmental and cultural histories.

A well-designed history garden can transport you. Here are some possible activities to bring history lessons and collective memories to life:

  • Harvest garden ingredients and prepare cuisine such as local SuTuKil dishes with your community or students. During the meal, students can highlight how contemporary vinegar recipes, fermentation methods, and grilling techniques come from centuries-old Indigenous culinary preservation techniques.
  • During the holidays or the Christmas season, organize historical reenactments, community dances, singing events, community history tours in the garden. Tours will spotlight plants’ significant roles in the past.
  • Make garden murals and garden sculptures to illustrate significant people and events relevant to your socio-historical themes.
  • Share stories relevant about a particular history topic while gardening. Invite community members, relevant experts, elders, and grandparents.
  • Create art, baskets, sculptures, and handicrafts with the gardens’ plants. Add art demos or workshops by local artists (e.g., carpenters, payag builders, banig weavers, and bamboo furniture makers).

In the Philippines, families, educators, community gardeners, tour guides, and food historians, can pass down a plethora of food-related histories. The vast diversity of regional cooking styles, barangay-specific recipes, holiday feasts, precolonial food traditions, and eras of botanical trade and global culinary exchanges offer a deep well of knowledge and history from which to draw. Below is a sample garden design:

This history garden features raised beds and a pond with native and naturalized plants with surrounding vegetation clusters. Each plant can represent historic Indigenous food traditions and ancient maritime trade networks. Students, teachers, and neighbors can illustrate historical plant connections through community events and educational activities.

Remember, the Philippines is over 7,100 islands with a multitude of cultural groups and ethnicities. From this we can learn and honor a rich, layered tapestry of food histories. Here are just 2 historical themes and plant combinations to inspire you.

Precolonial Visayas: Learn about from precolonial Visayas represents ancient food traditions we still practice today. Research the fascinating maritime trade routes that shaped the civilizations of the Visayas and the neighboring Southeast Asian islands. Students or communities can also use this garden to research precolonial communal planting methods and their ancestors’ adaptability to environmental conditions. Plants connected to these historical events are kamunggay, alugbati, gabi, sibuyas, banana, coconut, rice, and native herbs. You can choose to focus on popular ingredients from one of the several Precolonial Visayan islands.

Manila–Acapulco Galleon Trade Route: Explore the intercontinental trade route between Philippines to Mexico that spanned the 1500s through to the 1800s. Discover the tumultuous history that transformed both Mexico’s and Philippines’ culinary traditions, buildings, clothes, economies, customs and laws. Learn about the ships composed of precious Philippine hardwoods that made these colossal journeys possible. In this garden, you can grow commonplace vegetables in the Philippines originally from Mexico. Some examples are mani, sayote, kamote, kamatis, cacao, abukado, atsuwete, and pinya. Or you can grow plants traded from the Philippines like rice, coconut, tamarind, and mango. You can also include Ylang-Ylang, mulberry, cinnamon, and ginger to represent the Asian perfumes, silks, and other luxury goods transported through this fascinating trade route.

I hope this inspires you to grow your personal heritage garden or support garden-based history projects in your community or school.

The plant map above exhibits ingredients that represent prized precolonial trade commodities and precolonial food traditions. Below are photos of vines, fruit trees, shrubs, and groundcovers from the design.

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Growing an Eco-Resilient City

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in Container Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Green Roofs, Green Roofs, Raised Beds, Therapeutic Garden, wildlife garden

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

Worldwide, climate scientists and urban planners know green landscapes make a city ecologically resilient. Urban forest pockets, vegetated parks, and a citywide network of greenspaces protect metropolitan residents, land, soil, air and water. Tropical cities integrated with significant swathes of greenery can:

  • provide residents with recreational and relaxing community spaces
  • cool down and regulate high city temperatures
  • absorb stormwater and mitigate flood damage
  • improving air and soil quality
  • act as a sound buffer against urban noise pollution

Enveloped by Cebu’s urban air and land pollution, inadequate stormwater management, and seasonal flooding, how can individuals receive the life-saving benefits of citywide greenery? How can we expand ecological resilience and protect our fragile island? One method involves building multiple dense residential gardens. Imagine if every apartment complex, gated community, parking garage, and mall in Cebu City grew decorative islands of container gardens at least 4 meters wide. Or imagine if those structures had vertical gardens on at least 2 exterior walls. The collective impact of urban gardens would increase our environmental benefits and eco-resilience.

The photo below may look like a forest of trees and shrubs planted in rural property. But it isn’t. This is a collection of container plants in an urban residential property that grew over 10 years. Never underestimate the power of humble houseplants. This garden no special fertilizer or complicated pruning schedule. The container plants are simply watered 2-3 times a week, grow well in Cebu City’s weather, and withstand the urban air pollution. Below I’ll share how this container garden contribute to the urban network of greenspaces. Hopefully, you, your family, and friends are inspired to build more densely planted urban forest pockets and wildlife gardens.

Whether you’re a homeowner, apartment dweller, or as part of a barangay community project, determine how you can build an eco-resilient urban landscape.

Re-Define your space and Re-Prioritize. The property below used to have a regular in-ground pool. The pool was enclosed by bare cement walls. The homeowners decided to convert the pool and build a garden for a few reasons. Nobody really used the pool. The pool required liters of chemicals and tedious labor to keep it clean and chlorinated. Also, the pool area was hot, lacked shade, and often flooded during the rainy season.

As a solution, I proposed they convert the pool into a sunken garden of container plants. It could be a calming venue rather than a waste of valuable growing space. I designed a series of connected, naturalistic container gardens. We chose fast-growing trees, shrubs, and groundcovers that flourish in containers. The pool was drained of its chlorinated water. Raised beds and container gardens were installed inside the empty pool and along the cement walls. Vines were trellised above the pool and vertical container gardens were attached to poles and tree trunks.

Over ten years later, the plants thrive and perform essential environmental functions. They absorb heavy rains and stormwater. The area never floods. Residents, visitors, and local wildlife frequently rest in the garden’s shade and cooler temperature. Year-round, the air temperature is much lower than roads and houses outside the property’s perimeter.

In your space, assess your site and its capacity to hold container gardens. If possible, explore if any space can be converted to display raised beds or groups of container gardens. Be Open to the eco-resilient benefits you can receive. Cleaner Air, Cooler Temperatures, Relaxation, and Less Stormwater Damage awaits you.

Steps lead to a converted pool full of lush raised beds and groups of containerized ornamental and native plants.
Image gallery image
Coconut Shell Planters
Fishnet Raised Bed
Recycled Bottles

Containers can range from fishnet raised beds, recycled containers, ceramic and plastic pots, hanging coconut shell planters, and other container types available in your area.

Explore vertical spaces in your urban site. Vines and climbing plants are incredibly valuable and prolific growers in our urban tropical climate. As the vines mature, they absorb pollution, increase privacy, and improve air quality.

If you’re interested on more tips for container plant care, check out these articles. Enjoy and I hope you are encouraged to grow your own urban eco-resilient oasis or add to your surrounding network of greenspaces.

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Learning from Local & Regional Parks

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in agroforestry, Gardening and Landscape Design, Outdoor Classrooms, Outdoor Classrooms, Therapeutic Garden, wildlife garden

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

Local parklands in Cebu and Southeast Asia are cradles of botanic inspiration. Often, well-designed parks use regionally native or locally endemic trees and shrubs. Depending on the availability of their seedlings in public nurseries, you could use a few of these same trees or shrubs in your garden. They can be a spectacular eye-catching feature or hedge in your own gardens. Regionally native, indigenous, or locally endemic refers to a plant’s genetic origin and natural geographic distribution. In the scientific community, these terms have slight technical differences. Among some foresters, park managers, and horticulturists, these terms can be interchangeable. Native or Endemic can mean a plant originally grew in the coasts, forests, riverbanks, or other ecological niches in Cebu. Or maybe the plant was originally found throughout the mangroves or rainforests of the Philippines. Local, Native, or Endemic can also mean the plant naturally grows in Maritime Southeast Asian countries like Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

REMEMBER: make sure you have the time, water, and soil type to help your native plant thrive. For instance, you can buy the most locally native vine from Cebu’s uplands. But if it’s neglected and left unwatered on your concrete patio, the stressed vine may shrivel and die.

Be curious and inspired. Visit the lush splendor of local parks in Cebu and venture to the rest of Southeast Asia.

In general, choosing locally or regionally native trees and shrubs creates a strong, adaptable landscape. A combination of native plants function well with local climate and rain availability. As a result, they need less growing assistance from additional fertilizers or pesticides. When the trees or shrubs are well-established, local birds, bees, butterflies and beneficial pollinators can use these plants as a source of nectar and shelter. Often, the fallen leaves and roots of regionally endemic plants naturally mulch and enrich the soil’s health. Depending on the particularly adaptive species, they can have additional qualities like drought-resistance and wind-resilience. With a bit of research and a fun search through local parks, you can find extremely gifted trees and shrubs.

The examples below are popular regionally and locally endemic species suited to Cebu’s climate. They are best planted in the rainy season so they start out with a moderate amount of water and sun. Plants in this list also flourish in other islands of the Philippines and Southeast Asian countries.

  • PALMS & RATTAN TREES:
    • A- Arenga pinnata
    • B– Adonidia merrilli
    • C- Calamus erinaceus
    • D- Calamus javaensis
    • E- Caryota mitis
    • F- Oncosperma horridum
  • EVERGREEN & FLORAL TREES:
    • G- Aporosa benthamiana
    • H- Aporosa frutescens
    • I- Commersonia bartramia
    • J- Cratoxylum cochinchinense
    • K- Dillenia excelsa
    • L- Dillenia philippinensis
  • EVERGREEN & FLORAL TREES:
    • M- Diospyros buxifolia
    • N- Diospyros diepenhorstii
    • O- Syzygium zeylanicum
    • P- Syzygium incarnatum
    • Q- Syzygium antisepticum
    • R- Sterculia foetida
  • EVERGREEN & FLORAL TREES:
    • S- Sterculia macrophylla
    • T- Sterculia oblongata
    • U- Elaeocarpus grandiflorus
    • V- Elaeocarpus pedunculatus
    • W- Elaeocarpus petiolatus

Plant Photos: WikiMedia Images, NParks Singapore, Co’s Digital Flora of the Philippines; Design Illustrations: Michelle Domocol

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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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November Blessings & Lessons

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in agroforestry, Container Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Green Roofs

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

The severe storms in early November hit Healing Present buildings and forests with little damage.  Thanks to the dense forests and gardens that surround the buildings, we had light property damage and staff remained safe. All the buildings and water systems were well-protected. Our fencing was partially damaged because bordering neighbors remove their trees or they don’t plant trees. When neighbors remove thick vegetation and mature 100+ year-old trees, they lose effective protection from lethal typhoon winds. They also lose massive roots and healthy soil that easily absorb floodwaters. 

In Healing Present, we take additional measures for disaster prevention and disaster recovery. Here are some major safety moves we make in Healing Present:

1. Fortified forests. We take care of hectares of dense, continuous forest with giant bamboos and mature trees. These  surround each building and naturally protect us from storms.  We cultivate and  plant young trees in bare areas around the gardens and forest fragments. We only have a minimal amount of cement paths and steps that cover the soil. We also strengthen our soil with groundcovers, shrubs, and amendments to improve its structure. The soil dependably absorbs heavy rains so floods are not common.  Our dense, diverse forest slows down storm winds. A tropical storm can possess wind as fast as 80+ kilometers per hour. A typhoon destroys with winds up to 180+ kilometers per hour.  With that colossal force, we want our multi-hectare forest of massive branches and trunks to block and break up that wind. 

The night of November 4, I watched silhouettes of trees shake, resist, and slow the rapid gusts of typhoon winds blow through Healing Present.  Our oldest trees like mga Dakit, Nangka, Talisay, Siar, Narra, and Tipo were our best defenders. Yes, the next morning, we found hundreds of thin tips of branches broken on the ground. But the trees–leaves, trunks, and main branches–remained whole.  After seeing the damaged property fences, we hope to fortify our fencing and make it resistant to damage.  But that can be quite difficult when our neighbors do not plant any wind breakers like trees.  Still, we plan mature fast growing bamboos  near the fences. If you are interested in preserving typhoon-fighting species or growing them in your community, here are some heavy hitters:

  • Acacia (Acacia mangium)
  • Agoho (Casuarina equisetifolia)
  • Baguilumbang (Reutealis trisperma)
  • Bani (Pongamia pinnata)
  •  Bagtikan (Parashorea malaanonan) 
  • Bignay (Antidesma bunius) 
  • Bitaog (Calophyllum inophyllum)
  • Dagang (Anisoptera thurifera),
  • Kamagong (Diospyros blancoi)
  • Katmon (Dillenia philippinensis)
  • Lauan (Shorea malibato)
  • Narra (Pterocarpus indicus)
  • Pili (Canarium ovatum)

Our neighbors were not as lucky.  They haven’t maintained any forests or tree orchards around their houses. They regularly cut down their trees for charcoal and building material.  As a result, annually, their homes are directly hit by heavy rains and rapid winds. Their roofs fly off –all because they live in open fields and valleys with less vegetation.

2. Water and Food storage.  At Healing Present, we also add protocols and structures when electricity, water, and food supplies temporarily stop during a severe storm or natural disaster.  We installed rainwater tanks for an extra supply of water.  Every building has an emergency kit with extra food, drinking water, and first aid medical supplies.  We installed fire hoses and fire extinguishers incase a fire occurs during a severe lighting storm or electrical accident. Each building also a set of solar radios, emergency solar flashlights, and solar phone chargers, and walkie-talkies.  The equipment allows us with maintain our safety, health, cellphone communication, and ability to address emergency repairs during a disaster. We plan to also add solar cookers and solar panels so if our main electricity lines fail, we still have power for communication, food, and drinking water.

In alarming contrast, the open streets and damaged river systems of Cebu City are highly defenseless from typhoons or storms. Urban residents are told to call emergency agencies but those have no centralized phone numbers. They haphazardly have five or more cellphone numbers that are often not working. Dangerously inadequate and inaccessible. Storm winds can become destructively faster as they blow through the open cement roads and hit weak buildings. During storms, heavy rains continue to fill roads with no substantial drainage piping or absorption.  In effect, the roads become disgusting cement slides or pools filled with sewage water, floating cars, and pollution.  If you want to play a sad game while you’re driving in Cebu, try to count the amount of clean drainage vents, holes, or sewers  on the roads.  You’ll quickly see the new road widening projects don’t include upgraded drainage.  You’ll see skinny rectangular drainage openings blocked with garbage.  Every year we have a rainy season with increasing storms and yet every year we don’t see improved storm drainage or street cleaning. 

Here are other techniques that can help stop the yearly destruction of urban housing, electricity, water infrastructure, and lives:

Gardens and Vegetated parks.  A continuous network Cebu City street gardens and roofs with gardens of grass, groundcovers, vines and containerized plants could capture rainwater and absorb heavy rains. More large parks with trees and groundcovers in Cebu City would increase rain absorption and decrease flooding. Other types of natural parks could restore or construct wetlands and mangroves that act as defensive buffers against heavy storms and typhoons. As many Cebuanos know, we pay a very polluted and destabilizing price for the highways, malls, houses, and casinos built over Cebu’s original wetlands and mangroves.

Vegetated Parks
Roof Gardens

Places like IT park have a strong network of drainage channels and densely planted gardens properly control storm winds and rains. They divert and slow down the flow of stormwater in the their streets. In Cebu City, Healing Present has an office in Lahug.  In the back of the office is an old pool  converted into a sunken garden full of containerized plants.  These plants have the power to absorb heavy rains.  For more than ten years, this simple sunken garden has prevented any flood damage in our office building.  Our neighbors with the standard cemented landscapes can’t say the same. 

Pool converted into sunken garden with absorbent plants

Hopefully we can fight for long-standing, private and public storm disaster prevention and recovery measures at all scales– for our homes, workplaces, urban centers and rural uplands.

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