Green and bare it

MANILA, Philippines - There’s something about gardens that caresses and soothes the weary soul, and inspires poetry. Perhaps like the awe-inspiring tropical gardens you’ll see leaping out of the glossy pages of the book, yes, Tropical Gardens of the Philippines (exclusively available at all National Book Store branches at P1,950) by Lily Gamboa O’Boyle and Elizabeth V. Reyes with photography by Luca Invernizzi Tettoni.

Former stage actress Lily Gamboa O’Boyle is as passionate about gardening as she is about entertaining. Elizabeth Reyes is author of many books on Philippine design and architecture, like the ground-breaking Filipino Style. It was Elizabeth who looked for these spectacular gardens — all 42 of them, with styles that run from traditional to contemporary. Luca Invernizzi Tettoni has a blooming career in photography, specializing in books on Asian culture, history, and geography. The globe-trotting trio was in Manila to launch their book at the Fashion Walk of Greenbelt 5, Makati. Also there to grace the ribbon-cutting rites was the NBS family led by founder Socorro Ramos and Xandra Ramos-Padilla. Needless to say, guests had nothing but flowery compliments for the book, copies of which were snapped up faster than you could say philodendron.

Have a chair or a rose: Fabric artist Romy Glorioso pays tribute to Ernest Santiago with this red rose chair with a touch of whimsy.

Lily of The Valley

As you probably know, there are three things a man or woman must do in his/her lifetime. “Write a book, plant a tree, have children,” Lily completes the hanging sentence. Well, Lily has done all three, many times over. She’s written several books (Philippine Hospitality, Pacific Crossings, In the Gardens of the Philippines, and Tropical Gardens of the Philippines); she’s planted countless trees; she has four children and four grandchildren, with one on the way.

Traveling the world quite a lot, Lily has visited more gardens than she can count. She confesses, “When I travel, I’m always looking at gardens. And I’ve always been enamored with English gardens — their exuberance. I used to go to England and France a lot, go on garden tours.”

Then this seed of an idea took root in her mind. “What I wanted to do before was to make the Philippines a garden destination,” she muses. “One day, this woman, a travel agent, approached me and said, ‘Would you be interested in helping us do garden tours in the Philippines?’ I thought that was a fabulous idea because the Philippines has a lot of gardens. In the environs and suburbs of Manila, in Cavite, Laguna, and Batangas, there are many beautiful gardens. But this American travel agent, a friend of a friend, said we did not have the infrastructure to do garden tours. I said, but these are gardeners and they’re used to roughing it up. She said we had to make sure they could move from one place to another. I think she went to some of these gardens and said, ‘Oh, my God, the roads are not good! I don’t think I can bring my (American) clients.’ That was 10 years ago, maybe now, the roads are better. This is something that should be looked into because there’s so much potential.”

Tree’s a charm: An old mango tree with epiphytic ferns lords it over a moss-carpeted courtyard at the Farm at San Benito in Lipa, Batangas. Photos by LUCA INVERNIZZI TETTONI

There’s so much Lily wants to do for the country. “I want the Philippines to have a botanical garden,” she says with a passion. “That would be so fitting for a country that is so rich horticulturally.”

She writes in her book, “The Philippines — from rice terraces that climb to the heavens to little cottage plots found along the outskirts of towns combining orchard, vegetables, and flowers — is one big garden. A varied topography, diverse tropical climate, cultural assimilation from outsiders, and an innate love of nature all contribute to the huge variety of gardens we find in the Philippines today.”

Lily grew up amid the most beautiful gardens some of us can only dream about. “I grew up on a farm,” Lily traces her roots. “My mom, Regina Mayor of Romblon, has the greenest of thumbs. She was a natural.”

Rooms With Blooms

Lily has been gardening longer than she remembers. She also does a lot of entertaining in her garden or should we say, gardens — all 16 acres of them — in her home in Connecticut, where she lives with husband Bill O’Boyle and their children. Lily’s home used to be owned by J. Walter Thompson, with a dream garden designed by foremost landscape architect Charles Platt. This house is located amid lush gardens that Lily calls rooms. “They’re like rooms in the house, you can move from one to the other,” she describes. “My garden is terraced, done on different levels, because it’s located on a hill overlooking the Connecticut River.”

God is in the details: Stone sculptures of anitos (spirit gods) add drama to Vicky Herrera’s flourishing flower garden perched on a hill in Tagaytay.

She says with a twinkle in her eyes, “It was love at first sight. As a matter of fact, I even dreamt of it. I dreamt we were going to buy this house, but we already bought another house. We sold the other house and bought this one.”

Why does her garden grow so green and luxuriant? Let me tell you a story. Every day, as soon as she gets up, Lily takes her coffee, brings it down to her gardens and talks to her plants. “I always threaten to cut them if they don’t behave,” Lily shares with a mischievous smile. “Sometimes, I vent my anger on them. Plants are living things; if you cut them drastically, they have a survival mechanism. If they think you’re going to kill them, their reaction is to grow more. My garden has practically everything. In the fall, we plant the bulbs for spring; after spring, we take out all the bulbs and plant the annuals, perennials, whatever. We try to make it very efficient, to maintain botanical interest. If something dies, there’s something we put in there to replace it.”

Talking Green

Lush art: An oil painting of a lily blends with the spectacular Thunbergia mysorensis in the moon garden designed by Belgian veterinarian Peter Geertz in Tagaytay City.

Lily lives and breathes gardens. But for those of us who live such stressful lives and have no time to smell the roses or the peonies or the hydrangeas, or to plant anything except perhaps our feet in the ground, can we ever hope to have a garden? Lily’s instant reply: “Yes! You don’t have to have a green thumb. Just don’t be too ambitious. Start small. Try a pot. Don’t overwater, it’s a common mistake; you end up with rotting plants. You have to know the growing conditions of your plants. Like you can’t have a shade plant in a very sunny place. You should approach gardening like you’re decorating your house. Sometimes, you say, ‘Oh, I need to change that pillow in the sofa.’ It’s like saying, ‘I’ll change those plants, put a little more color.’”

You can talk green with Lily until you’re blue in the face. She talks about the latest trends in gardens. “In Japan now, they’re doing a lot of rooftop gardens. And in France, Europe, and even in Singapore, they have this vertical gardening, which you can apply to walls. If you go to Paris, one of the museums there, the Musee du Quai Branly, a natural history museum, is all covered with tropical plants. The plants are planted on felt with pockets of soil. This type of gardening has a special irrigation system so that it can be applied on the wall or a little bit detached from the wall. They can even be moved, you can buy them by the panels.”

For now, Lily can’t stop talking about our tropical gardens, some of the most beautiful in the world. Surely, they deserve a two-green-thumbs-up!