Tag: native trees

Forests Upwards & Outwards

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

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

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);
  • local fig tree species (e.g., Ficus nota);
  • nitrogen-fixing vegetation (e.g., Moringa oleifera);
  • 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.

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Landscaping Local & Homegrown

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in agroforestry, Color Combo & Design, Gardening and Landscape Design, wildlife garden

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_

Back to Inflourish: Cebu

In today’s post, I’m celebrating landscapes–large and small–flourishing with native trees, shrubs, ferns, flowers, and grasses. Gardens that showcase the Philippines’ endemic and indigenous flora instill pride. I recently saw a presentation that emphasized Philippines has over 3000+ indigenous trees while all of Europe has only 454 native species. And boy do some European countries campaign for the protection and widespread use of their small pool of local trees. In Cebu, our own government buildings are adorned by the same typical palette of non-native foliage planted around local hotel chains.

The culture of undervaluing native species originates from a host of historical and economic reasons. One cause stems from a commercial plant industry that isn’t equipped to propagate many types of native species. Plus customers are unfamiliar (or assumed to be inexperienced) with native species’ maintenance needs and aesthetic.

But those trends can change. I hope we eventually invest in a horticultural industry and culture that celebrates, researches, and proliferates the protection and integration of endemic and indigenous flora in our personal gardens, commercial spaces, and public parks.

Here’s a fun design to inspire new garden combinations that feature endemic and indigenous flora.

In this design, the numbers represent the following types of plants: 1-Ficus species; 2-Nauclea orientalis; 3-Native and naturalized Bamboo species; 4, 5, 6, 8, 10- Groups of Native Shrubs; 7, 9, 11- Native Ferns

1- Ficus species. You can use local fig species like Ficus nota, Ficus variegata, and Ficus ulmifolia. These species are fast growing, attract beautiful birds, and fruit all year. Ficus nota and Ficus ulmifolia grow to 3 to 5 meters and shade smaller gardens during hot, sunny days. While Ficus variegata grows in full sun and rises to 25 meters.

2-Nauclea orientalis. Locally referred to as Hambabaw or Bangkal, these trees sprout distinctive spherical fruit. They are fast-growing, tolerate waterlogged soils, heavy winds, and produce beautiful blooms in full sun. They can reach 15 meters and their outstretched leafy branches offer cool air (like natural air-conditioning) and excellent shade.

3- Bamboo species. Native bamboo species from the Cyrtochloa, Dinochloa, Schizostachyum genera are great choices. When planted in groups they create natural screens and privacy from neighbors.

4, 5, 6, 8, 10- Shrubs. Borders with alternating sections of shrubs create bold accents. For example, grow 5 local blueberry shrubs in a group. Then next to that group grow a cluster of 5 Cratoxylum shrubs. Alternating clusters make more visual impact than a single row of different individual shrubs. Other shrubs you can plant are bignay species, lemongrass, and pay-at (Clerodendrum macrostegium, Clerodendrum brachyanthum, or Clerodendrum intermedium).

7, 9, 11- Native Ferns. Diplazium esculentum (edible fern) and Lygodium species (nito) are wonderful, hardy choices for combining groups of ferns.

I hope this design encourages you to discover more native flora in your local forests and plant nurseries. And if you already know about local indigenous and endemic flora, I hope you’re inspired to garden with native species and teach others about your knowledge of local trees, shrubs, and flowers. The above photos of plant features are from Co’s Digital Flora and Wikimedia commons. I highly recommend Co’s Digital Flora if you’d like to learn more and marvel at the abundance and diversity of native species around the Philippines.

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Terrific AgroforesTrees

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

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

In previous articles, I described the environmental recovery and reforestation techniques practiced at Healing Present. In this post, I’d like to continue our chat about agroforestry and forest restoration.

We select a variety of indigenous trees that will survive the current conditions of Healing Present’s site. We also choose them for the ecological benefits. Generally, all of the species chosen for reforestation enrich the land by:

  • increasing soil fertility,
  • supporting native wildlife,
  • feeding food pollinators like bees and butterflies, and
  • controlling soil erosion
Photo 1. Healing Present crew grow, plant, and monitor the health of the native agroforest trees.

Healing Present’s crew cultivates hundreds of tree species (Photo 1). Many of these species are already established or waiting to be planted. The current rainy season and typhoon repairs delay our progress sometimes. But I want to highlight 5 indigenous trees and the important roles they play in our restoration:

1. Toog (Petersianthus quadrialatus)

When respected and left alone, this towering giant can grow to 65 meters. As part of an agroforest and restoration site, Toog has the ability to repel pests like destructive woodboring beetles. Toog are homes to important wildlife and mitigate the loss of tropical forest biodiversity.

2. Dakit (Ficus benjamina)

On a sunny day, you’d want rest against a Dakit’s trunk and under its canopy. On average, its leaves and branches spread to a 21-meter crown. The canopy provides the best shade for people, shade-loving plants, and animals. Thankfully, the shade also suppresses sun-loving weeds. On top of that, Dakit attracts vital seed-spreading wildlife like birds and bats. It can endure degraded soil and quickly occupy abandoned areas that need reforestation.

3. Kapok (Bombax ceiba)

Traditionally, Kapok’s seeds and pink blossoms were used for food and medicine. In Healing Present, kapok is primarily planted for its ecological functions. Like Dakit, it can quickly occupy barren woodland. Its fragrant flowers also attract key pollinators like bees and birds. In addition, a 25-meter tall Kapok tree can serve as a boundary marker. A group of Kapok can also form a living fence.

4. Banaba (Lagerstroemia speciosa)

Banaba (Photo 1) is more than the gorgeous purple flowers. Agroforesters treasure banabas and their ability to repair unstable soils, control erosion, and add nutrients to formerly degraded forests. Beyond those incredible qualities, banaba can be pruned. The pruned leaves, fruit, and branches can be food for livestock and medicine.

5. Kamagong (Diospyrus blancoi)

Finally, we arrived at the beloved Kamagong. With its reddish, velvety mabolo fruit, Kamagong has so much more to offer than furniture timber. Kamagong in restoration projects are amazing partners in soil erosion control and wind-resistance. Wind-breaks and wind-resistant trees are like environmental guardians in a country so vulnerable to typhoons.

There you have it…5 rockstars in Healing Present’s growing reforestation project. I hope you get inspired to learn more about our precious environmental heritage and the various ways to protect it.

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Resilience and Recovery after Typhoon Odette

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

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

At Healing Present, we continue to rebuild and recover from the destruction and aftermath of Typhoon Odette (Photo 1). Luckily with amazing supervision from the founder and the farm operations crew, we are making progress. We have deep gratitude for the Healing Present staff who continue to repair, rebuild, and replant the portions of the farm/forest that were damaged. Sylvia, Mario, Ariel, Jaime, Jerry, Marvin and Yeng Yeng all  rebuild and adapt Healing Present to this era of more severe storms and lethal wind velocities.

Photo 1. Building re-construction and repair after the typhoon. Photos from Sylvia Suson.

Typhoon Odette left us with detached roofing, broken windows, fallen vegetation and disrepair that results from 189-mph winds. The damage was extensive and heartbreaking. The damage also prompted us to refine our strategies to mitigate typhoons.

It would be misguided to rebuild and re-vegetate the farm without considering the new characteristics of this past typhoon.

Some of the overarching management questions that guide our typhoon recovery:

  • How do we rebuild while considering the new severity of typhoons?
  • How can we improve our current mitigation systems?
  • How do we cultivate trees near our facilities that will not fall and cause damage?
  • Are our trees still resistant to these new, stronger typhoons?
  • Is it possible to manage a forest patch that can withstand the next storm, flood?

In this article, I share an excerpt of our post-typhoon evaluation. This excerpt focuses on tree management and windbreak systems. Improving our tree care and windbreak is one of the many important land management strategies to strengthen our typhoon preparedness.

Photo 2. Periodic tree and windbreak evaluations at Healing Present

Tree care & Windbreak Evaluation

At Healing Present, we plant feature trees, forest patches and agroforestry windbreaks to protect crops and reduce wind damage to our facilities (Photo 2 and 3). As mentioned in a previous article, windbreaks are an agroforestry technique that:

  • create favorable microclimates,
  • decrease wind erosion,
  • increase biodiversity,
  • stabilize soil,
  • buffer noise, and
  • screen undesirable views.

Windbreaks are also a living combination of trees, shrubs and groundcover that may need refinement or improvement to suit our changing environmental challenges.

5 questions to help evaluate the effectiveness of our windbreaks and other trees:

1) Are the trees and shrubs in our windbreaks planted too densely? Sometimes when windbreak plants are too close together, they block incoming winds. This block can cause too much wind turbulence in the areas you’d like to protect. A protected area can include a building or vegetable beds. Effective windbreaks are more permeable and reduce windspeed; rather than stopping it entirely.

2) Are we giving the trees near our buildings enough rooting space? In general, large and small trees with enough room to grow a wide and deep fan of roots can be less vulnerable to high winds.

3) Are the trees near our buildings healthy and possess good structure? Perhaps Healing Present can decrease the amount of uprooted vegetation by paying more attention to the large trees that are planted close to structures. Ideally, these should have healthy trunks and central leaders. This can be managed with a consistent pruning program. This includes trees that survived the typhoon. Broken branches must be pruned so they don’t fall or cause further damage in a future storm.

4) Are there any isolated or potentially hazardous still standing near the existing buildings? If so, we need to monitor them. Isolated trees could be planted with more vegetation so they buffered from future wind events. Do any trees that survived the typhoon show signs of decay? Old trees showing signs of decay, disease or damaged roots may need to be monitored or removed if hazardous.

Photo 3. Evaluation and care for forest patches and featured trees near buildings.

5) Are we still planting the best wind-resistant species? Some of our trees had medium levels of wind-resistance because it suited storm pressure.  Perhaps we need to integrate some more high wind-resistance species to match the new, supertyphoon characteristics in our area.

When selecting windbreak species, a variety of species, ages, and layers of vegetation is preferred. Local observation is key to effective selection. We can check our property as well as neighbors’ properties to observe which species withstood the storm. Online lists of wind-resistant trees are great, but not always helpful. These recommendations don’t always match your specific climate and soil conditions. At Healing Present, if we notice a species that consistently withstood the typhoon, they may be a great candidate for windbreak re-plantings.

Photo 4. Forest fragments, denuded hillsides, and mixed agricultural areas of the Cebu uplands. Photo taken prior to Typhoon Odette.

Undoubtedly, systemic disaster preparedness is much more complex than evaluating windbreaks and planting wind-resistant vegetation. But it is a significant component to our recovery and repair. On a broader scale, disaster mitigation would be more effective with broader, structural forces like a cohesive national preparedness strategy.

Recovery would be exponentially easier if the Cebu uplands (Photo 4) and urban lowlands were strategically forested or designed to reduce the wind velocity of torrential rains and typhoons. If the upland forests contained continuous stretches of healthy, strongly rooted vegetation, residents could be more protected from typhoon winds.

If we, as a global community were more adept at battling climate change, the severity of our storms would be less lethal. The “if only’s” are numerous and layered. And I lament the inactive collective. Nevertheless, Healing Present is grateful for our operations team and the landscape management strategies that help us recover from future typhoons.

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A for Agroforestry

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

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

With Healing Present and other landscape design clients in Cebu, I use agroforestry practices. Agroforestry is a set of sustainable land management strategies practiced globally. These land management practices take many forms and integrate existing and accepted types of farming. In Healing Present, I chose agroforestry as a design approach for their crop systems and forest rehabilitation projects. This design approach met their preferences for organic cultivation and environmental stewardship. If successful, agroforestry can achieve goals that are important to me, my clients and maybe you too. These goals include:

  • increase organic crop productivity
  • restore and conserve local native plant and wildlife biodiversity
  • maintain a healthy and clean water supply

Agroforesters in the Philippines commonly include practices like shaded perennial intercropping, living fences, erosion-control vegetation strips, and windbreaks. To learn more about agroforests in other countries, click here.

Don’t worry if these terms are new to you. Below is an example of how these strategies are combined in a landscape.

As you can see Photo 1, three main components are included in this agroforestry system. The shorter perennial food and medicinal crops occupy the central food gardens. Then the outer layers are taller fruit trees and native habitat species. If site conditions were favorable, you could even grow some of those shorter perennial species under the tree canopy. The vegetation strip with native trees serves as natural erosion control. The trees’ roots stabilize the soil and reduce major landslides. In practice, these species are not frequently managed. Instead, they are monitored monthly and designated as a biodiversity corridor.

Less visits from the farm crew and visitors allow shy wildlife to feel safer in a new biodiversity corridor. The native species also:

  • increase the land’s soil fertility,
  • provide nutrient-rich mulch layers
  • regulate nitrogen cycles, and
  • support local food pollinators.

The staggered rows of fruit trees are both windbreak and living fences. This means some species protect crops, farm facilities and local wildlife from storm damage and high winds. As a living fence, a group of the fruit trees demarcate property boundaries. The fruit species are situated closer to the central food gardens. They are seasonally harvested for personal and commercial use. The central food gardens are cultivated and managed daily. Other examples of agroforestry systems include the following combos:

  • Sample 1. Taro, Sweet potato, Pineapple, Breadfruit, Mango, Papaya
  • Sample 2. Cassava, Pili, Chayote, Coconut, Guava, Leafy Vegetables
  • Sample 3. Shade tolerant herbs and yams with Sun-loving Native tree species like Talisay, Molave and Narra

The planting design must reflect your site conditions, harvest needs and environmental goals. For instance, Sample 1 is full of species for food harvests, soil improvement, and windbreaks. Sample 2 is great for food harvest, medicinal uses, and living fencing. Sample 3 can provide erosion control, food harvests, habitat restoration, and soil improvement.

I also practice agroforestry because the methods aim to address Philippines’ major environmental crises. Many agroforestry practitioners in the Pacific and Southeast Asia recognize biodiversity conservation needs to be integrated into agricultural landscapes. This action reduces the direct pressure agriculture can play when practiced with destructive land conversion, chemical-based fertilization, and crop cultivation that depletes soil. Through my environmental studies and research in Cebu, I learned we need biodiversity preservation and ecological health. We also need food systems that safeguard biodiversity and the sustainable use of our natural resources. Beyond human needs, the indigenous wildlife of greater Luzon, Mindoro, western Visasays, Mindanao and Sulu have suffered species losses from weakly managed wildlife reserves.

Unsustainable agriculture and biodiversity loss directly impact our economic health. Millions of Filipinos depend on the services and biological products of functioning forests and ecosystems. Without functioning forests, coastal storm buffers, fertile soil, and healthy watersheds, we are susceptible to natural disasters, commercial market instability, widespread malnutrition and a degraded water supply. Cebuanos know, all too well, the price we pay for rapid, exploitative urbanization, massive deforestation, and coastal degradation.

It’s no wonder, agroforestry is selected as a land management approach in the Philippines.

If practiced successfully, agroforestry can increase harvest yields, improve soil fertility, restore habitats, and protect watersheds from agricultural chemicals. Indeed, agroforests can’t substitute well-preserved natural ecosystems. And it’s certainly not a panacea. But perhaps it’s a step in a beneficial direction.

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