Tag: garden

Healthy Starts to Homegardens

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

By Michelle Domocol
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

Homegarden agroforests are personalized, multi-functional gardens. When you grow your own homegarden, you can harvest from a mix of trees, shrubs, and vegetables that can grow well together and provide you with an affordable source of nutrition. 

You can create the homegarden that plays a multitude of roles: a supply of fresh vegetables, floral bouquets, fresh tea leaves, herbs for your favorite sauces, fruits, wood for construction projects, habitat for local butterflies, or a thick shrub/tree buffer to shield you from noisy neighbors and their loud dogs.

Depending on your design the homegarden can start out as circular groups of plants or linear rows. They can be as simple as two tree species like limonsito and kapayas planted in between your favorite vegetables like camote.

As you learn more about your growing site and try more cultivation techniques, you can add more species and create a more complex food forest. Homegardens can also have multipurpose trees, nut trees, medicinal herbs, groundcovers and fragrant butterfly-attracting shrubs.

A homegarden with popular perennials, annual vegetables, herbs, edible ferns, and fruit trees. Other possible choices are saluyot, kulitis, paliya, upo, okra, and kangkong.

In Healing Present, our homegardens feature perennials (plants that live longer than 2 years) and annual vegetables (several harvests and life cycles within a year). Some of my favorite multipurpose perennials are kamunggay, balimbing, and passionfruit. With balimbing and passionfruit, I add the leaves to my daily meals. When they bear fruit, I freeze them for my desserts. Kamunggay’s edible flowers, leaves, and pods are a treat. If you let them grow tall and mature, the provide shade for nearby plants. Passionfruit vines create a thick barrier of leaves on fences so you can have a visual and sound barrier from roads and neighbors.

To maintain the Healing Present’s trees, the talented staff gardeners apply coconut husk fertilizer the soil surrounding the fruits and shrubs. They also prune the fruit trees during certain times of the year to keep them productive. They also regularly add leaf and woodchip mulch around young seedlings. There are other daily and monthly practices to maintain the homegardens but Fertilizing, Pruning, and Mulching are key.

Adding Coconut Husk -based (Bunot) Fertilizer around Fruits and shrubs
Pruning Fruit Trees
Mulching around young trees, vegetables and shrubs

Interested in starting your own homegarden? Here are some tips to get you designing your personal food forest:

  1. Plan & Learn. Ask yourself what plants you find useful or interesting. Plants can fulfill many uses like food, beauty, fragrance, floral decor, songbird attraction, privacy hedge, windbreaks, and more. Brainstorm a garden design with potential vegetables or fruit trees that are easy to grow in your site. Or if you already have some plant knowledge, focus on crops you may know how to grow. Visit plant nurseries and purchase seedlings or tree saplings so you don’t have to start every plant from seed. Be inquisitive. Learn from local farmers, plant nursery staff, local garden clubs, city agriculture programs, university horticultural departments, local plant workshops, online gardening communities, garden design magazines, or online courses. Feel free to explore the following articles or click on the links below this article for more ideas: Terrific AgroforesTrees, A for Agroforestry, Kamunggay, March’s Featured Crop, March: Food x Flower Gardens
  2. Perennial progress. Ask a local nursery or farmer about perennial vegetables, mushrooms, fruits, and herbs that require a low amount of inputs (like fertilizer and pesticide). This means they are long-living, well-adapted, and less likely to give you pest or slow growth problems. It will be even better if you find these perennials fit your needs and preferences.
  3. Groundcovers and mulching. Learn what groundcovers and mulch options are available to you. Growing groundcovers (like mani-mani or ferns) and/or placing mulch (from rice hulls, fallen leaves, or fallen branches) around your young plants reduce the amount of space for weeds to take over your new garden. Over time, as your garden matures, the trees’ roots and overhanging leaves will shade out spaces in garden and reduce weed growth.
  4. Start Small. Don’t be overwhelmed by designing a large space. If possible start by converting a small space. Then, as your skills improve, venture outward and expand the homegarden with simple or more complex combinations of plants.

Enjoy the rest of March! See you in April with dessert recipes, simple fertilizer recipes, and more.

Feel free to contact ask.inflourish@gmail.com for design or gardening questions.

order new garden design ebook today!

click here to download free garden guides!

Solace in the Garden

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

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

This March I’d like to share some garden designs that served as venues for different therapies. Some would classify this use of greenery and vegetation as horticultural therapy. Maybe these designs can inspire you to use beautiful, natural settings or backyard gardens to nurture your health goals and needs.

Patient Therapy Gardens
Meditation/Prayer Gardens
Gathering Spaces

The therapy gardens in this article focused on supplementing hospital services. I envisioned a network of beautiful gardens designed for patient treatment and recovery. As part of a hospital’s holistic healthcare ministry, the garden-based therapy programs
would support oncology, neuro-psychiatry, physical therapy, and rehabilitation medicine. The new gardens could also complement or serve as more spaces comprehensive counseling and hospice programs. Garden-based activities would facilitate the patient’s personal treatment goals. And depending on their condition, patients receive opportunities to participate in activities to address physical, cognitive, affective, psychomotor, and psychosocial functioning. In my particular project, the hospital’s Therapy Park programs supported novel, individualized treatment options that aimed to improve recovery rates, increase patient satisfaction, and upgrade standard care in the Psychiatric, Physical Therapy, Rehabilitation, Oncology, and Hospice Care departments.

Be Open. Tailor these ideas to less specialized health goals like daily relaxation after work.  Focus on simple landscapes like a medicinal tea garden, backyard prayer space, outdoor meditation nook, or mini exercise patio.

Patient Therapy Garden

In this example, the horticultural therapy garden would be restricted to patients and their medical advisers and therapists. The features are wide wheelchair-accessible paths. Shade trees are behind cushioned seating for patient comfort.

The garden also features wheelchair-accessible activity tables and elevated raised beds. The landscape could be adorned with colorful flowers, culturally–significant plants, beautiful flowering shrubs, and hypoallergenic greenery.

This type of garden could be a venue for a program like:

“Weekly Gardening with Acute Psychiatric Patients” – Patients participate in group horticultural activities while they build coping skills. The goals may be to improve social skills and creative self-expression. Patients may foster self-efficacy, confidence, and self-esteem.

A) Shade trees like talisay, fruit trees like balimbing or hardy, non-allergenic native trees with curved, cushioned seating; B) Circular elevated garden beds with wheelchair accessibility for patient activities like herb-planting, orchid cultivation, or bromeliad care; C) Colourful Native wildflower beds, lantana shrubs, hardy groundcovers with ferns; D) Durable benches with groundcovers, fern varieties, and local lily varieties

Meditation & Prayer Gardens

In this second example, meditation gardens would be outside hospital chapels. This design features an outdoor relaxation room. The area would be equipped with cushioned, recliner furniture while lush greenery and a calming pond elicit a serene ambiance.

This type of garden could be a venue for a program like:
“Restore & Reflect with Cancer Patients” – Oncology patients learn garden-based meditation and relaxation. They practice breathing techniques to manage anxiety, feelings of isolation, and emotional distress. These are common conditions associated with a new cancer diagnosis and cancer therapies.

A) Calming pond with gabi varieties and other hardy semi-aquatic species next to altar and lily groundcover; B) Large ferns and irises with trellised vines like nito, camote, buyo, philodendron, passionfruit, or gabi-gabi; C) Bed of fragrant types like lemongrass and citronella; D) Comfortable recliner benches, ottomans, and outdoor rug

Gathering Spaces in Therapy Park

Other sections of the hospital’s landscape would have open access to the public or patients’ visitors on select days.  When restricted access is required for patients’ therapies, the garden could be closed to the public.  This example features lawns for Physical Therapy activities, wheelchair-accessible raised beds, ergonomic elevated planters, wide paths,  and ramps. 

This type of garden could be a venue for programs like:

• “Garden Exercise for Physical Therapy (PT)” – Patients learn specialized outdoor physical therapy (PT) techniques and gardening skills to support their standard PT program. The customized activities could increase muscle activity, increase joint flexibility, increase exercise frequency, increase strength and stamina, improve motor skills, and increase circulation.

• “Garden Journaling for Talk Therapy/ Group Counseling Patients“- Clients in mental health, substance abuse, grief, and family counseling programs could participate in semi-structured nature journaling activities. During these activities, patients could increase self-expression, decrease stress, and write about coping skills taught in indoor counseling sessions. 

A) Shaded seating with vines and shrubs like calamansi and pandan; B) Walkway with large fragrant and floral gumamela varieties and camelia; C) flat lawn with low-maintenance grass and large shade tree like narra; D) Lounges and cafe tables to meet with family and friends or patient consultations and therapy activities; E) Elongated garden beds for patients’ herb, bulb, or shrub gardening; F) Wheelchair accessible garden beds for inclusive gardening and group activities; G) Slip-resistant flooring for optimal safety.

I hope you find some workable ideas for your personal health-focused garden. Who knows? Maybe connections to nature and greenery may support your holistic health journey.

Feel free to contact ask.inflourish@gmail.com for design or gardening questions.

If you need more inspiration, here are more examples of gardens focused on health and medicinal plants:

Medicinal and Therapeutic Gardens

Towering Pergolas in Children’s Gardens

A for Agroforestry

order new garden design ebook today!

click here to download free garden guides!

Sinulog Reunions

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

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

It’s Sinulog! January in Cebu is bursting with joyous music, dance, history, and cultural celebration. The vibrant parades, unforgettable costumes, the sea of people, and the food inspire jubilant garden designs. When I was younger and based in the US, I looked forward to flying to Cebu during Sinulog. My mom and other family friends working overseas were giddy when they returned home to Cebu. Every meal, outdoor concert, and dance competition we attended was a spirited reunion, a homecoming  As I munched on new delicacies, the adults around the table regaled each other with their childhood memories of beloved desserts. They giggled and gleefully recalled the home cooks and barangays known for the best bingka, puto, and budbud. While I was mesmerized by the Sinulog dance competitions, my mom’s friends graciously shared Cebuano specialties like budbud kabog, linusak, masi, bingka dawa, and torta. Now that I’m much older I’m lucky enough to live in Cebu. I no longer need a 24-hour plane ride to enjoy Sinulog and Cebu’s delicacies.

Let’s bring a bit of Sinulog’s kaleidoscope of community, color, and tradition into fun garden inspiration:

Sinulog Design Activity:  Think about your favorite meals, dishes, or desserts you eat or prepare during Sinulog. Think about your friends and family’s favorites.  Now write down some of the common or major ingredients. I bet some of those ingredients can be planted in your backyard garden or personal farm. Next, think about your favorite activities during Sinulog. Is it the cooking, dancing, communal karaoke, spending time with grandchildren, watching concerts, or celebrating with your religious community? Whatever your preference, how can you incorporate it into the garden or farm? In my first garden design example, I use plants mainly for decoration, beauty, and some snacking.  If you want your garden to produce a large harvest for your future meals, you’ll add more plants.

Now that you have a good list of plant and outdoor furniture preferences, think or ask an expert landscaper what is feasible for you. Think about your existing sunlight exposure, soil conditions, water availability, site dimensions, and other qualities of your space.

Example 1: The Sinulog Dessert Garden

In my first example, I use a small backyard garden space. It’s planted with native and decorative shrubs and trees. It features kabog (millet), saba banana, mangga (mango), and mani (peanut) plants as a reference to a few of my favorite Sinulog dessert ingredients. I also added outdoor lounges, seating, and a wooden platform as a reminder of Sinulog dance parties and family get-togethers.  The seats can be easily moved to add dance space.

Here are some elements I incorporated: 1) a circular raised bed, attached seating and cute plot of kabog (millet); 2) a dwarf variety of Saba banana like Saging Mondo that grows to 2.5 meters; 3) a grafted dwarf mango in circular container;
4) dwarf coconut trees with decorative yellow flowered-shrubs like cannas and peace lilies as a groundcover;
5) a circular raised with plot of peanut seedlings

Example 2: Sinulog Versatile Outdoor Room

In this second example, I incorporated a central multi-purpose space for people who want the flexibility to convert their garden into a venue for religious services, karaoke parties, or outdoor grilling. The featured plants feature red tapay-tapay flowers (celosia) and yellow dahlias to reflect the motif of Sinulog dancers, posters, and decor. In the other garden beds, I added durable plants with colorful complementary floral/foliage like gumamela (hibiscus), mayana (coleus), and San francisco (croton). You can also add a low-maintenance, native edible fig tree like lagnub (Ficus septica var. salicifolia) for shade and beauty.

Here are some elements in the 2nd example: 1) Sinulog red celosias and yellow dahlias under a fig tree in garden borders; 2) the central flooring can serve as a religious ceremonial space; 3) outdoor tv for group karaoke or movie parties;
4) portable bbq grill

I hope my design suggestions inspire some festive brainstorms. Enjoy the rest of January and savor the rest of Sinulog with friends and family!

Feel free to contact ask.inflourish@gmail.com for design or gardening questions.

If you need more inspiration, here are more examples on colorful celebrations and dessert gardens, click below:

Binignit Garden

April’s Dessert Garden

Atis: Ice Cream Growing on Trees

Popping with Color

(Title banner image by G. Amorim)

order new garden design ebook today!

click here to download free garden guides!

Welcoming the Holiday Season with New Garden-Savvy

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in agroforestry, Food Garden, wildlife garden

By Michelle Domocol
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

As we welcome the upcoming holidays and new year, I’ll share new updates from the Healing Present’s reforestation projects and amazing techniques we’re using in our gardens and agroforests. Maybe our garden and forest projects will inspire you to relax and share a love of plants and natural wonders with your friends and family this holiday season. Some of the upcoming articles will feature wonderful work from our resident garden managers like Ariel and Yengyeng. We’ll share new designs and video tutorials on:

  • food forests and agroforestry home gardens
  • vermicomposting, coconut husk fertilizer, and mulching
  • new decorative vertical garden techniques
  • native forest regeneration methods
  • native tree care
  • seed saving
  • and fun ways to reuse and give new functional lives to old doors, old glass or plastic bottles, and other discards

I look forward to sharing our updates. You’ll also be hearing from local gardeners, forest managers, and farmers about their land management progress and techniques. I’ll share fun interviews and we can marvel in their exciting news together. If you’d like your garden, farm, or forest featured in this blog, email ask.inflourish@gmail.com

Till next post, Happy Holidays!

a,c,d-using old picture frames, doors, & tree trunks to make beautiful vertical gardens;
b-making fine mulch from fallen branches or exotic trees;
f– saving seeds from the garden trees like achuete;
g-making strong plastic twine from old bottles; h-coconut husk fertilizer
Vermicompost snapshots: Feeding and adding fluffy cardboard bedding for our prized vermicompost worms. They love vegetable scraps and chopped banana pseudostems aka bani or banana trunk

Bees & Belonging

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

By Michelle Domocol

Back to Inflourish: Cebu

Growing up, I always thought it was delightful when a person’s last name echoed their interest in nature. It seemed reminiscent of an quaint scene in folktales. Like “Mr. Green worked in his garden next to Señora Flores’ floral shop after they received produce from the farmer, John Boom”. These namesakes connoted an inherited path towards a desirable, verdant destiny.

Don’t get me wrong. I am proud of the life paths I independently laid.

Fortunately, all of us, with or without a floristic name, belong to an ecological heritage we can protect. This can be everyone’s legacy.

But I understand the power and cultural influence of a namesake or a family narrative. For some, it can summon perseverance when hurdles seem insurmountable. Sometimes a simple last name or the mythical origin of an ancestor can offer a stronger sense of direction. It can feed an imagined belief that you are guided towards the right choices. I’ve found this angst and search for guidance re-emerging in my friends; especially as their senses of self were shaken by the pandemic.

Nearly 40, with solid self-knowledge, I recently discovered my family does bear a nature-based last name: Abella. This article celebrates the Iberian etymology of my grandma’s family name. “Abella” was historically related to a nickname for a busy bee (a buzzing, active person) or a beekeeper. It’s a charming extension of my well-established love of ecology.

So, onto our Bee-utiful environmental heritage and my design chat: Pollinators in Pollinator Gardens.
5 of the 9 species of honeybees in the world are native to Philippines. At least 7 species of stingless bee species are found in the Philippines.

Globally and especially in the Philippines, pollinator gardens are vital to the health of our ecosystems, economies, and our food security. Pollinators, such as bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, and certain flies are the ecological foundation to farms, mangroves, and every type of forest in the Philippines. They enable plants to reproduce or bear seeds, nuts, berries, and fruits. Their massive impact on the health of our world is mind-boggling. Unfortunately, pollinators, like most of our vulnerable wildlife, face population destruction from agricultural chemicals, pollution, climate change, and habitat loss.

Cebu PollinatorsDownload

Below are design ideas to start a pollinator garden in your school, community garden, or home. If you’d like more detailed pollinator gardens order my book on Decorative Designs & Kitchen Garden Designs. Please note my design illustrations for this article emphasize the vegetation by muting the colors of the hardscaping (constructed areas and furniture).

Photo 1. Features in the Butterfly Yoga Garden.

1) Butterfly Yoga Garden. Build a shade house or sunroom that immerses you in a pollinator’s habitat (Photo 1 & 2).  The shade house is like a greenhouse with plants but usually built with green shade netting. If you’re in an area that does boil in the summer, consider building a sunroom. This building can have large windows or a clear, corrugated, polycarbonate plastic roofing like a traditional greenhouse. Alternatively, you can use white shade netting. Your flooring can be composted, mulched or covered with gravel. A portion of the flooring can be tiled so that you have add seating or yoga mats. This can be a peaceful place to meet friends, exercise, or meditate. The pollinator plants can be installed into the mulched or graveled flooring, raised beds, or other containers. Keep the greenhouse windows open so pollinators can visit and use your garden.

Photo 2. A closer look at the shade house or sunroom.

Some of the plants can be cannas, coreopsis, mint, or basil. Outside the shade house or sunroom, plant a pollinator-attracting fruit tree like mango, guyabano, jackfruit, or atis.

2) Pollinator Garden Party. Pollinator gardens are enriching opportunities to teach students about insect life cycles and plant-pollinator relationships. They are especially attractive to teachers, parents, and caregivers averse to “butterfly kits” or any learning tools that capture wild animals. Instead, you can build a mini-environment like an outdoor garden classroom to exhibit natural cycles.  Observation decks and educational signs are additional tools that can help you facilitate outdoor engagement with nature (Photo 3).

Photo 3. Learning tools in the Pollinator Garden Party.

Some pollinator plants you can cultivate with your class are katmon, pili, native orchids, gardenias, magnolia trees (like champaka), cinnamon tree (Cinnamomum camphora) or flowering varieties of passionfruit.

There are numerous activities you can host in a pollinator garden. Here are some sample activities:

  • Ask garden visitors and students to wear, pink or yellow at the garden. These colors attract pollinators. This can lead to a class conversation about floral color and insect vision.
  • Create an outdoor gallery sculptures or photos taken in the garden with your class to study the phases of butterfly life cycle.
  • Conduct “treasure hunts” or a “bio blitz” to help children identify and discover different pollinator plants and evidence of a pollinator’s activity (like insect bites on a leaf)

3) Citrus Home Garden. At home, you can create a garden that attracts beautiful native butterflies and stingless bees. Start building a collection of potted dwarf citrus trees or venture into a back yard citrus orchard (Photo 4). Pollinators love the blossoms of lemon, lime, kumquat, pomelo, mandarin, and limonsito (calamansi) trees. You’ll have a delicious harvest. And you’ll create a needed haven for our diverse pollinator friends.

Photo 4. Citrus Home Garden concept.
Related Articles about Pollinators & School Gardens:

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