Bulacan town earns P30M from garden industry

GUIGUINTO, BULACAN—This “garden capital of the Philippines” continues to flourish and blossom as its primary industry has generated P30 million for the local government in the past 15 years, the municipal farmer said.

On Thursday, the local government opened its 26th annual Halaman (garden) Festival with various programs and competitions, since January. 18 to January 21, in support of the main economic earner of the city. About 300 garden shops, nursery owners and propagators, including landscape artists, provided earnings to about 3,000 workers and residents from the industry, giving P20 to P30 million in taxes and revenue annually to the city government for the last 15 years, according to the Municipality. Roel dela Cruz, agricultural agent.

Dela Cruz said that the tradition of the Halamanan Festival continues to develop and harness the plant and garden innovation of industry members through the artistic design competition for ornamental plants, bougainvillea, cactus and succulent growers; the design of the flat garden in five minutes; landscape design; the categories of topiary and figure plants.

Guiguinto has been the ornamental center of Bulacan since the 1960s when garden stalls and nurseries popped up all over Barangay Sta. Cruz, Violeta Village, Rosaryville and along the Cloverleaf and at the approach of the North Luzon Expressway in Tabang.

Since then, the industry has grown to supply the needs of garden plants in the rest of the country and evolved into the Halaman Festival started in 1998 by the then mayor and now Bulacan fifth district Rep. Ambrosio Cruz Jr.

Halaman won the best festival award in 2022 and 2023 during the Singkaban Festival, a cultural festival that takes place in Bulacan every September. It was also recognized last year by the Aliwan Festival, the festival of festivals of Metro Manila, as among the main local cultural events in the country.

This year, all 14 villages in the city participated in the festival, which will also include a street dance event ‘Indakan sa Kalye’, featuring students dressed in garden and plant design costumes dancing around floats and “carrozas” (carriages) with similar garden designs.

Hybrid plants

Mayor Agatha Cruz, in a separate interview, said that this year, they invited experts from the plant and livestock industry to help the industry grow more through more hybrid experimentation.

“We invited experts from UP (University of the Philippines) Los Baños, landscape artists, architects, urban planners, from agricultural businesses, entrepreneurs because we can learn from them being in the same plant culture,” said Cruz on the side of the company. opening of the Halaman Festival.

Cruz previously led the inauguration of the iLab Guiguinto garden tissue culture laboratory provided by the Department of Science and Technology during the tenure of former Secretary Fortunato de la Peña, who hails from the adjacent city of Bulakan.

“With our laboratory and the help of our experts, our local plant experts can also conduct experiments to create more hybrid plants,” added Cruz.

Henry Alcantara, head of the Department of Public Works and Highways-Bulacan First Engineering District, said the laboratory structure will be completed this year after it was interrupted due to the pandemic.

The municipal government will also build a tourist garden and a souvenir shop, to include a food and coffee center, which is hoped to become one of the tourist attractions in the city, Cruz said. INQ