My Philippine Garden

This site was created in 2017 while I was on "gardening leave" as a pictorial reference to the changes that occurred over the gardens development lifecycle and as a pictorial inventory of what exists in the garden that would be useful to me to remember and might interest others who are thinking about starting their own garden in the Philippines.

Garden Development Pictures

It took a few of years of work to establish the garden, the pictures below show some of the progress from construction site to present day. As of 2024 the garden has had about 9 years for most of the plants to mature; with the pictures below showing some of the changes since inception.

2012 - 2013 - September 2014

December 2014 - January 2015

Progress as of Mid to Late 2016

Progress as of May 2018

The Intent

I wanted a garden that was open, with large grass areas that one could walk on barefoot with no worries about stones or objects in the ground that could hurt your feet. The garden planting was to be focused on various specimen herbaceous plants that would grab your attention and make you linger to look at them. The plants were to have their natural shapes maintained and arranged in busy competing patterns rather than high maintenance manicured designs that local landscape designers suggested.

The front garden was to be tidy grass area with the orderly planting around the boundary boarder to maximize the sense of available space and to avoid security surveillance system obstructions; whereas the back garden was and is to be more jungle like with multiple directional walking choices. With all this in mind, a planting plan was created so the correct number of plants could be initially obtained and space would be left for the ones that could not be found. I also only visited the property infrequently over the first 5 years as I worked in Singapore, so planning and remembering what had been done was important.

Another google earth view at the end of February 2018 showing two years growth in the garden as well as a person watering the lawn at the front.

Planting around the boundary is not my preference, but to prevent impulse purchases and partly to explain to others what I was up to, and why I would say no to getting plants that didn't fit into my plan or to communicate the order in which I needed to purchase them. So I drafted a chart to show the rough order of which to plant first with that taller plants closer to the fence and shorter ones in front of them. I had to take chances and plant when I could with consideration of the wet / dry seasons.

Inspiration came from many sources, but two gardens stood out, Dennis Hundscheidt's Brisbane garden that I had read about and in Singapore a garden that I would visit often, which was the Singapore Botanical Gardens [SBG]. I would show my collection of pictures of the two gardens to people help them understand my intent. With 3000 square meters [30 meters wide by 100 meters long] to play with, the front 2000 sqm was used to give the open SBG feel around the house and to give children space to play games. The back 1000 sqm wasn't the initial priority and its development was about two years behind the front garden.

Actions, Challenges and Choices

The section is an old rice field and as a consequence, its profile is very flat and prone to being water logged, one of the first things done was to raise the height of the property so that this did not occur when the farmers irrigation channels were full to flood the surrounding rice fields. Initially about 900 elfs [small truck loads] of clean soil were added favouring the front two thirds of the property. More soil was acquired over time, but this was the single most important purchase.

Then the house was built. Builders are messy people it was a constant source of aggravation to find bits of concrete, plastic strewn and dumped around the property during and after construction. There is little local understanding about keeping the environment clean during construction. Even post construction visitors sweet papers are dropped where they are opened or flicked away a short distance assuming that is ok. It is still an ongoing challenge to this date to stop people littering as they do it without thinking.

I like herbaceous plants, specifically the Alpinia, Heliconia, Canna, Costus and maintain a Plant List, which is general inventory of plants in the garden and one with some photos of the Various Plants. It is hard to make mistakes with Gingers & Heliconia, they offer a wide variety of choices, unfortunately I could not find many local choices other than red ginger or the Heliconia Rostrata; which I like very much, so had to import some. The first plant choice was easy, I wanted Foxtail palms around the property and planted about 26 of them in September 2014. These palms became the structure by which all other plantings were influenced. Followed by the Red Ti Plant [Cordyline Fruiticosa] and Calathea Lutea [Tobacco Plant] locations. These Various Plants are hardy and they had to be as after planting and watering for a week, did not see them for another 3 months.

Cathathea Lutea grows quickly, they have big showy leaf blades on long golden stems. It did not take long before the short plants were 2 meters tall and now they stand as stout dense groups sending stems with large leave blades to 3.5 meters in height. If you let them, they could almost become invasive.

A challenge faced was planting in a manner that gave the plants sufficient space to grow but allowed them to seen and watered after planting. Since I was not able to look after the plants, I relied on others to do this while I was away, so some plants perished as a consequence. A few mistakes were also made in under estimating how much room they needed or thinking that some would grow fast enough to outpace another plant when in fact they got overwhelmed.

The time difference between the middle two pictures below is only 10 months. The planting combination of Cathathea Lutea [Left], Red Ti plant [Center], Golden Pandan and Red Wax Palm [Right] hiding the Heliconia Longissima [six inch seedling] at the back, but 3 years later and the Longissima has begun to dominate, probably overcrowding all the other plants in another 2 years. So wish I had put an extra meter of space between some of the plants. The expectations is that once the Red Wax palm gets to 5 - 7 meters tall that it will add some additional vertical height to the arrangement and become the feature focal point, but that is many years away. In 2022 I estimate that the red wax palm has reached a height over 5 meters tall and the Heliconia Longissima was removed.

First Picture January 2015. The Middle Two Pictures Are Taken Ten Months Apart. Forth Picture is October 2018.

Red Ti Plants gets quite "leggy" giving the Yellow Pandan a bit more space and every now and then I have to remove some of the overhanging Heliconia Longissima leaves to open up the area, but overall I am pleased with the combination and performance of the plants. The side planting of red ginger was added later. On the far right the Heliconia Chartacea x Platystachys 'Temptress' which was planted about the same time, can be seen, compared to the 5 meters plus height of the Longissima, it looks delicate.

Same view as above sequence of photos, but as of February 2023 , the red wax palm was planted almost 9 years ago and is beginning to stand out behind the yellow pandan as intended. A January 2015 comparison picture is shows the change over time. The concrete wall is now hard to see, a big mango tree in the background fell over and where possible additional plants have been added. I added a couple of new Foxtail palms in 2020 that were grown from seed, the foxtail palm planted in 2014 had to be replaced with a new one that was planted in front of the old one, this palm needs a couple more years of growth to be taller than the surrounding plants. So what started as a skinny border of plants has matured nicely.

In 2018, It was expected that there would be beds of flowering plants in front of one or two of these, at a later date when I have the time to dedicate looking after them, this will create a more irregular structure around the Palms & Dracaena. I tend to repeat planting formations with the aim of having some colour continuity across the perspective, when viewed from the house as shown in the picture below.

A series of May 2018 panoramas

Progress as of May 2019

A couple of pictures taken just before heading off to the airport, my bags can be seen beside the orange gate. The second of two mango trees that were in the front is confirmed dead, a pity and sure it is because of the soil added to the section several years earlier smothered the roots, although I was told at the time that Mango would be ok, that was against my better thinking at the time. Otherwise not much has changed over the last year, the plants got bigger or taller, with almost no empty spaces to put an extra plant in. Which is good as it is now time to think about putting in the garden beds. I prefer not to have hard boarders, however if use some small upright heliconia, I will need to, as they are "runners" and seem to perform best when confined. At this time of year the weather was fiercely hot, about 35C with some candy floss like clouds providing no shade at all, so it was a lot hotter than 35c standing in the direct sun.

I use grass everywhere, my assumption is that I prefer to have the ground covered with grass and deny weeds the opportunity to grow. Plus I think it looks nicer to have the grass everywhere. I am not tempted to put in a pond or swimming pool, the grass is my water equivalent.

A big decision was the type of grass to use for the lawn, something durable was wanted. A good lawn can amaze people, where I live people typically do not have the space nor the commitment to put aside space for a lawn, but I wanted people when they enter my garden they see an oasis of grass that stretches almost the entire length of the property. Putting a lawn down is transformational, it changed the property from a building site to a tidy house almost overnight, so a lot of thought was given to Lawn Grass.

Progress as of April 2020

After a lot of thought and various proof of concept layouts on the lawn, I decided that it was time to put in a driveway as well as some garden paths. I wanted the garden paths to break up the monolithic green mass of lawn in a manner that encourages people to walk around it. The picture below is a halfway point in that only the soil has been removed and gravel bedding added and compacted. I went for crop circle pattern with a series of interconnect circles that allowed me to dig up the centers if I want later on. Went for a finished look of dark grey paver edging with red pavers sandwiched in the middle.

November 2020 with incremental changes due to plant growth, the cola gigantea has doubled in size. Probably the biggest impact on the garden has been my guard dogs, they patrol the perimeter relentlessly or sit lurking somewhere under the cover of the plants waiting for something or someone as a consequence there are furrows behind many plants where they run and hunt. The dogs don't dig, but have removed a couple of plants if the plant impedes their movements, or if there is bushy area, will clear out the center part, leaving the exterior intact and hide/rest/lurk inside.

Rain And More Rain

I put a slight slope on the property so that water does not pond and there is a concealed drainage on the entire length on one side, with another drainage line on the high side for just half of the property. When it rains, and it can rain for weeks during the rainy season, the water runs off afterwards quite quickly, but on the heavy downpours the water just covers the entire section before it runs off.

It is impressive to see the just how heavy the rainfall can be, in these environments having gutters is futile, they would just overflow. Add some wind and nothing will stay dry and I have seen large trees with the weight of the water and a strong gust in one direction topple the tree over. Typhoons are another complication as they bring heavy rain and strong winds with the rain coming down at an angle, sometimes horizontally.

Typhoon Ulysses (internationally named Typhoon Vamco) was the Philippines' 21st tropical cyclone for 2020, it hit the main island of Luzon hardest from November 11 to 12 and really did some damage to the garden. We had several typhoons already during the typhoon season with no problems experienced and consequently were a bit casual in preparations. For the preceding Typhoon called Rolly I had as usual cut most of the pendant heliconia leaves in half, staked susceptible to breakage plants and then relaxed.

However Typhoon Ulysses went right over us with winds that really surged cutting some of my toughest plants such as calamansi in half. The tallest heliconia were beaten badly; Six foxtail palms were blown over; All but one of my favourite yellow Frangipani were snapped into many pieces; perimeter security cameras were broken. Leaves from neighbouring trees were everywhere. Several of these trees outside the property fell down damaging peoples roofs. For a week or so after the typhoon the sound of chainsaws could be heard everywhere.

The wind pushed the rain up the windows and through small gaps, the rain was also pushed up the roof, so got some unexpected water damage. The whole property looked like it was underwater for a short time, but it ran off quickly when it did stop raining because the property is slightly elevated.

Our internet and powerlines were brought down and were lying on the road. Lucky one of our friends in the subdivision is an electrical contractor, so got him to tidy up the mains power and it was restored in 12 hours. For Internet, the provider ConvergeICT was unreacheable/unresponsive for weeks; after a month it was only when we put in an application to upgrade our internet [at twice the rate of our current rental] that they fixed it [within hours]. On the whole we were very lucky as many people suffered for a long time afterwards.

The intensity of rain here in the Philippines can be quite surprising, in July 7th 2023 we went from a hot 35c afternoon to a hail storm which was brief. A typhoon has the same intensity for many hours, the plants get beaten in one direction and then as the typhoon passes, the plants get beaten in the opposite direction.

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Status as of November 2022

Time just seems to pass quickly and very enjoyably, the plants have matured and filled out. The yellow pandan with the aid of pesticide are over 1.5 meters tall, but you have to be vigilant against the army caterpillars as they can destroy plants within a week. The two Belgium Malinois guard dogs have carved out lairs behind groups of plants and thankfully their destruction is not obvious, that said, late at night the dogs often play games with some garden refuse and leave it on the lawn and occasionally red ti plants get bitten in half. Many of the Red Ti plants have purposely been cut so that new branches / growth occurred at a lower height.

I always wanted garden beds with annuals planted in them, but over the years that desire evaporated and have been content with what I have. Some plants have been removed as plants needed more space, but generally very happy with the current arrangement, but that does not stop me adding smaller plants in a gap if possible. Some plants such as the Crouton's or known locally as San Francisco plants just drop their leaves and die after flourishing for many years, which is annoying.

Probably one of the few significant changes over the last couple of years has been the addition of a lot of solar lighting to light up the garden at night. The dogs often request that I go outside at night and take a walk with them to the back garden where they enjoy hunting in my presence, the lights don't aid them at all, but the lights certainly make me feel more comfortable accompanying them and they really enjoy the night time company.

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