Local parklands in Cebu and Southeast Asia are cradles of botanic inspiration. Often, well-designedparks 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Last June I took a break from posting an article and dedicated more time to managing new projects for Healing Present. The in-house construction and plant nursery staff are working hard to grow tree saplings and upgrade fences around our established forests and budding new agroforestry gardens.
I’d love to share some brainstorms for plant combinations for our upcoming forestry and garden plots. It’s incredibly essential to focus on Healing Present’s private reforestation but Cebu’s fragile environment needs the broader protection and resource enhancement of Mananga-Kotkot-Lusaran watershed forest reserves and public green spaces like CCPL (Central Cebu Protected Landscape).
Beyond Healing Presents current projects, I want to also share my personal aspirations for community-led watershed forest restoration through CCPL (Central Cebu Protected Landscape):
Support Existing Watershed Forests. On Healing Present’s existing forests’ creeks and natural pools by increasing biodiverse native canopy cover and understory. We will use techniques like assisted natural native plant regeneration, medium diversity planting, tree island nucleation, and coverage rows to increase cover in degraded riparian buffer areas. We would plant climate-adapted, typhoon-resistant canopy species (eg., Anisoptera thurifera, Parashorea malaanonan, Shorea malibato, Petersianthus quadrialatus), deep-rooted windbreaks and erosion control species (eg., Calophyllum inophyllum and Diospyros blancoi). If possible, we’d like to echo this action on a broader community-connected scale. In the future we’d like to join other organizations’ efforts to provide vegetation and technical support to local watershed forest reserves in the nearby CCPL. Increased canopy cover improves our watershed’s functionality and ecological services such as wildlife connectivity, riverbank stabilization, and freshwater recharge. Any effort to truly increase biodiverse the watersheds’ native canopy cover between forest fragments and other degraded areas of the watershed forest reserves would benefit the province and city of Cebu.
Support Existing Watershed Agroforestry training and implementation. In Healing Present, we promote and plant multistrata agroforesty designs for native forest restoration, our own consumption and health benefits. In the future, we’d like to provide support for existing agroforesty initiatives that are more around our nearby watershed. We’d also like to help existing reforestation projects plan crop cultivation schedules that ultimately lead to phases of forest restoration. Some combinations we’ve recommended around Balamban and properties include species that are :
high-value timber (e.g., Anacardiaceae and Caesalpiniaceae, Verbenaceae);
cash crop nut trees (e.g., Canarium ovatum);
high-demand fruit trees (e.g., Citrus spp.Mangifera altissima, Chrysophyllum cainito);
perennial culinary and decorative (eg., Zingiberaceae).
We’d also like to join organizations in their efforts to provide training and resources for locally accessible agroforestry interventions and sustainable enterprises. CCPL, for example, would benefit from a strong and continued Successional Agroforestry Training Program. Trainees would learn market demands, community preferences, biophysical conditions, labor availability, affordability, and infrastructure. Options would be compatible with regionally practiced agroecological methods, low tillage, and climate-smart agricultural techniques. The multi-strata agroforests permitted in CCPL could be intercropped with native nitrogen-fixing vegetation, fast-growing nitrogen-fixing groundcovers, fodder species, and perennial crops in multiple-use zones, depending on the trainees’ site conditions and management goals.
Other suitable site designs, affordable crop management, buyer negotiations, product marketing, and commercialization would benefit the existing and new farmers in CCPL. Featured management techniques could include selecting multipurpose trees/shrubs that enrich soil and crop productivity (e.g., Leucaena spp.), contour vegetation strips, floral insectary hedgerows, living fences, windbreaks, and multistrata homegarden designs. The program will facilitate farmer-to-farmer exchange with existing homegarden and medium-scale systems. Some examples would focus on ginger-based agroforestry models, diverse taro systems combined with native shade trees (e.g., Dipterocarpaceae), climate-adapted crop varieties, and improved grafted varieties.
The targets on agroforestry and improved watershed management in CCPL enhance community-led engagement in watershed protection. Agroforestry-based production presents economically viable methods to simultaneously implement watershed restoration and generate income for communities of growers.
Support Native Bat Habitat. In Healing Present’s forests and CCPL I want to refine the focus on stabilizing resident keystone bat populations (e.g., Golden-capped Flying Fox, Large Flying-fox, and Little-Golden Mantled Flying Fox). Strong bat habitats support the restoration of the watershed’s multiple ecosystems and their indigenous flora and faunal communities. The protection of bat populations also sustains their role in watershed forest regeneration, commercial fruit pollination, and agricultural pest control through Cebu. If reforestation is successful, the aim is to increase native bat forested habitat connectivity between fragments of closed canopy, open canopy and other tropical rainforest patches
In Healing Present, we want to increase the amount of food and habitat trees preferred by Golden-capped Flying Fox, Large Flying-fox, and Little-Golden mantled flying fox (e.g., Ficus aurantiaca, F. variegata, F. crassiramea, Nauclea orientalis). In CCPL, if more bat habitat projects move forward, the sites for bat corridors and applied nucleation can connect areas of wooded grassland, shrubland, closed canopy forest, highly fragmented primary and secondary tropical rainforest patches, riparian forests, and ravine dipterocarp forest patches.
I’m excited Healing Present continues to increase the vegetation in our forest fragments but they will weaken if nearby greenspaces and watersheds outside our private properties are unprotected, bulldozed, and covered in concrete. Hopefully effective community efforts can battle the unmitigated commercial development, sand and gravel extraction, solid waste pollution, agrichemical pollution, and unsustainable charcoal production on our precious Mananga-Kotkot-Lusaran watershed forest reserves in CCPL.
