It's In the Bag!

The cabána, that is! A friend gifted me with a personalized tote with a photograph of our place printed on it. Not only is it so unique, it's also very practical and useful. Suddenly, my Christmas gifts to friends look so unimaginative...

The Glamping Tent

For some years, I've been toying with the idea of a furnished camping tent; I had no clue there is actually a term for it and it has become quite a craze in Europe in the recent years! Glamour camping, or "glamping," for short, is like a more comfortable, stylish, and relaxing version of roughing it out in the

wild. Now a friend gave me this oversized, seven-man tent when we started the farm and I furnished it with our own home-made bamboo furniture.

Batik Tablecloths

Earlier this year, I had to make a quick trip to Indonesia and I managed to sneak out from the business schedule and buy some nice batík table cloths. They're nothing exotic nor valuable; in fact, I think they're some inexpensive, touristy beach sárongs but they look gorgeous in the gardens nevertheless.

They have coordinated patterns (in this case, flowers) in contrasting colors of blue and orange; I have another set with butterflies (not in the photo), in the same color scheme. Two ends are fringed, while the long sides have a jagged pattern on its senepa.

Home-Made Pavers

Something I owe from reading assorted gardening and design books is getting inspired to try out making for ourselves, home-made concrete pavers with imprinted leaf patterns from our own surroundings (above). With the help of our erstwhile construction team, it did not even take us half a day to figure out how to achieve some fairly handsome pieces.

We excitedly gathered assorted tropical leaves, all with defined shapes, textures, and patterns to make the final products more unique and interesting. We set out to make two dozen, and we made sure we did not repeat any leaf!

Foremost in our list were papáya (pawpaw), anáhaw (fan palm), rímas (breadfruit), even the unassuming kamóteng káhoy (cassava, sample on top photo, left side).

On the mold, we poured wet concrete then topped it with fine concrete powder, gently pressed the leaf, and just left it dry out in the sun. That simple!

By now, it's been some years and the pavers have achieved some aged patina (below) which gives it an even more finished look.

Piedra China

We found a great deal offering one lot of piédra chína, numbering around forty hefty and heavy blocks of dense, raw stone yet naturally polished over hundreds of years. They are of similar sizes but are all uneven; no two pieces are exactly alike. Some are squarish, some have slants. Some have a tinge of pink, while some have longer and shorter sides.

It was both challenging and exhausting to lay them out! I wanted them to look randomly,  naturally in place, as if it has always been there, organically part of the landscape. It has a very practical purpose: I needed to connect the entrance driveway through the muláwin gate all the way to the cabáňa with a solid pathway as it always gets either dusty or muddy to walk through.

It was extremely back-breaking to establish a pattern, through trial and error, with stones as heavy as tree trunks! Not only are they uneven (above left and right), I also needed to make the path curve as gracefully and effortlessly as possible.

Their thicknesses also vary widely, so the depths we had to dig to make the finish with an even surface was different for each piece! In the end (below), all the hard labor paid off with a handsomely paved walkway gracing our garden's foyer.

Faux Bonsais

Desert Rose (Adenium obesum)

Not everyone has the time nor the space to garden, yet I do not know anyone who does not enjoy, or at least appreciate plants. All the more time-consuming is the horticultural art of growing bonsais. It requires a lot of patience, skill, a good eye, and a LOT of time.


But the next best thing people can have is to have select plants that would look good in bonsai dishes. For some months now, I have been combining unique pots with the right plants and training the branches to create a handsome, sculptural look.

Ficus nana

For a reasonable amount, we are starting to sell off some of these pieces. They would look best on tabletops, by entranceways, on a porch where it will get lots of sun. We can only feature a handful here in the blog, so come and visit to see the others that we have.

Dwarf Pandan

Customized Pandan Baskets

My caretaker's wife, Cristina weaves by hand, rustic baskets out of pandán leaves that grow in the gardens, and I've asked her to customize sizes to hold our assorted household containers. It's awesome enough that we make our own natural and biodegradable containers, but all the more it's remarkable since we simply make use of old leaves from the garden (so now, the pandans are always clean and never have dried leaves left on the shrub!).

But apart from it making your ordinary objects look better, it actually has plenty of other practical purposes. If you use the basket to hold baking dishes (below), it also serves as a tray that absorbs heat and functions like a lightweight trivet. So If any of you want to serve your Pyrex trays from oven to table with its handsomely bespoke lightweight hot mat, Cristina can easily whip up one with precise dimensions to fit them to a T.

Of course, it goes without saying that the same baskets (top, with the flatware) can be used for still so many other things and areas around the house. Below, it can be a workdesk organizer to hold a multitude of small things (that always get misplaced) or further below, a caddy to hold small towels in your powder room.

Farmer's Carry-on

On a recent trip to Indonesia, I found this bamboo and pandan leaf basket in a local market which looks very utilitarian yet attractive at the same time. In the Philippines, we have a similar native carry-all called bayóng but this shape tells me it serves something more specific than a dump-anything, earth-friendly shopping bag. On one side (below left), it is permanently taut with a rattan braid; on the other side (below right), it is open by default but has a bamboo peg and abaca twine to secure the content.

Now I don't speak Bahása but it didn't take long to understand that it's a basket for carrying chickens (admittedly, it did involve someone having to borrow someone's rooster some stalls away). What I see here in the country are mostly perforated cartons or a bayong with improvised holes. Anyway, I promptly bought one and because it is quite an unusual shape, I just carried it on with me on the plane. Such is the life of a weekend farmer; while everyone on my flight via Singapore had smart-looking carry-ons and the latest electronic gadgets, there I was lining up in the gate with a chicken basket!

More Terra-Cotta Pots

It's flattering that some people note we have practical yet attractive and unique plant pots; last December I've featured a collection of artisanal terra-cotta pottery and now, we have new pieces and want to share them with you.

The designs are forward-looking yet traditional, rustic in nature but impressively urban and sophisticated in lines and shapes. Moreover, they are never mass-produced and are always limited in stocks. It's not a problem to re-order previous designs but it also doesn't mean it's always readily available. Besides, it's more interesting to see how the craftsmen always come up with attractive finished products.


We have the pieces in the farm, come anytime to choose what would suit you.

The Life Outdoors

We are featured on this month's issue of Metro Home & Entertaining; the sub-headline on the cover "A garden to live in" refers to us. It's fellow blogger Patrick Gozon, accomplished architect, professor and local tree advocate, who expertly wrote us up, the plants, and the garden design.

It's available in local book and magazine stores now at only P200.00 (around US$4.75).

From My Library: Bawa: The Sri Lanka Gardens

I have long been a fan of the Sri Lankan architect, Geoffrey Bawa. One of the reasons is that his designs almost always incorporates plants and landscaping into his structures, which are so organically designed that they look like they grew out of the land. 

Along with his brother Bevis, he unknowingly set a new direction in tropical landscaping, which style evolved through years of experimentation, invention, and a lot of thinking out of the box. Both of them were foreign-educated but came back to what was then Ceylon and started seeing their country and its lush landscape with all its exotic plant life through new eyes.


This book, "Bawa: the Sri Lanka Gardens" showcases their respective estates, Lununganga and Brief. Apparently, both places are still maintained the same way until today, despite the fact that they have both passed away many years ago. I have had a guide book to Sri Lanka for some time now; I should make plans to see these gardens for myself.

The Big Picture

Just the other day, I overheard someone say again: "Don't miss the forest for the trees." I have always been predominantly a big-picture person; a lot of times something small is staring up at me right under my nose and I still cannot see it. But strangely, gardening can get me so absorbed and immersed in anything particular, urgent, and detailed. Consequently, a lot of times when I see the gardens, I see problems and gaps and bullet points to write down on my clipboard. It takes quite some effort for me to literally step back enough to appreciate what the gardens have become. This must be destiny's way of balancing my life.

We built the gardens little by little, as organic as possible. It sweeps me off my feet when people find it hard to believe that we've only been around a little over three years and that it was an abandoned, overgrown farm when we started. We let the land and trees tell us what to do. But now, midstream, I periodically forget about this basic tenet especially when I'm too absorbed understanding a bromeliad's habit or why a fern grows one direction and not the way I want it to.

There is no set formula for any garden, as there are just so many variables to consider for one to be, well, almost perfect. There are templates, I agree; but you'll end up like a templated garden which is worse than not having a garden at all. I guess part of the success and more importantly, the fulfillment in garden design is discovering what the land tells you how to go about it and discover the beauty in the natural.

Left-over Lumber

There were some left-over logs from the previous owner by the time I was handed-over the farm; Mang Pilô humbly requested if I wouldn't mind that he cut three trees for him to use to build a new house: sangkáp sa báhay, he said. How can I refuse since he's grown these himself? I thought I'll offer to buy him new lumber instead but by the time I told him, the trees by then were beams and 2x2s. And that's how I came about having a couple of stumps; santŏl, dúhat, and in the photo above, muláwin (moláve), prized tropical hardwood.


Anyway, one day, we borrowed the chainsaw from the cooperative (which is impressively monitored by the barangáy) and  had this particular muláwin piece cut.

The stockier parts I had squared off to get even blocks of lumber that can be used for pedestals or stools. Meantime, I'm still letting them air-dry for months, maybe even some years before finishing them. 


The more irregular section, I had it sliced (above right and below). Now the noise alone of the machine was jarring, and the smell of the petrol and the industrial oil doused to lubricate the chainsaw gave me a headache; yet I hung on to watch since it was really exciting to see how each cut would reveal gorgeous grains, texture, and color; awesome work of nature.

That same afternoon, under the sizzling hot sun, we excitedly laid the pieces out on the grass and designed around them. It's strange that a lot of times, working with nature will often give you its own design solutions.


Now, some muláwin slices make up my pedestrian gate, complete with a let-through to allow us to reach in from the outside and work on the padlock!

Constructing the Cabaňa

Still-fresh anahaw leaves right after installation.

It wasn't until end-April 2009, the day after San Celestino's fiesta, that we started constructing the cabaňa, my pilot project. For months, I visualized in my mind how to plan the different areas: the gates, the driveway, the site of the future house, the water lines. Coming from an urban, technocratic background, everything seemed so abstract, imprecise, and full of infinite variables.

Moreover, I have been putting off building since I had no clue how best to deal with my circumstance. First, I have bought an old house for its lumber and have just been on storage for months. I've been to many places that have re-used old wood and I want it for my place too. Buying it was easy; what threw me off was the logistics of transporting, storing, sorting, and selecting. When I was still purchasing it, I had so many design ideas in mind. But when I was already confronted with the ten-wheeler truck full of narra planks and muláwin posts (below), I was at a loss where to start.

The muláwin posts are neither straight nor even and just drawing them, let alone putting them up and keeping them there to hold up the roof, baffled me no end.

I thought of re-visiting a favorite of mine: the late artist Pacita Abad 's house in Batanes that February. It's inspiring, personal, indigenous, and organic. But seeing it this time, all its scope and cost, with the idea of doing something similar daunted me. All the more when I found out that the main design and construction proponent until then is former congressman Butch Abad (Pacita's brother, now Budget Secretary). I don't think he would want to drive over periodically to Lipa to help me make my cabaňa.


Then I remembered another artist, Ugu Bigyan whose garden and workshop I've thoroughly enjoyed. I thought I'll call him up to introduce myself and consult, especially since his place in Tiaong, Quezon is just a half hour's drive from us. Fortunately, it turns out that he actually accepts construction work and not only did he take up my project but it was also the beginning of a good friendship.


The design was very basic: a four-post hut using my muláwin posts, bamboo rafters and an anáhaw roof. We agreed on a budget too, and a time frame, more or less. He sent to the farm his core group of skilled and trusted carpenters/artisans and I would always excitedly drive more often than before to check on the progress.

Mid-stream, someone miscalculated the length of a beam...

... and instead of re-working it, we decided to extend the hut by adding two more posts.

Manually tying the bamboo rafters
together with uwáy (rattan).

Weaving the anáhaw leaves onto the
bamboo frame.

Soon after, they started working on the roof and that changed the over-all atmosphere altogether. After all, the primary purpose of the hut really is to literally have a roof over one's head. The natural, breathable material cools the interior significantly and has so far been maintenance-free for two years now.

By adding two more posts to the left, the six posts were no longer equidistant. We thought it best to build a partial wall on the backside, not only for protection from the elements but also to create a portal/foyer-like space on one side. Serendipitously, the wrong beam length produced an even better outcome.

Also, it appals me to see black (or even worse, green!) nylon mesh on top of natural roofs, to hold it down and keep it pressed even on the windiest days. A more natural solution, though more laborious to make, is a bamboo mesh which is locally called sála (the same Tagalog word for "sift").

I also put together some hand-me-down furniture from my grandparents' house, some teak pieces that will hold up well to the elements, a rattan duyán (hammock) handmade by my staff's uncle, and lots of cushy pillows to make the place more comfortable.