ZAMBOANGA CITY—Zamboanga City is on the verge of losing its title as the country’s premier “city of flowers.”  The reason:  The city’s flower growers have an alarmingly low yield of the blooms the city has been known for for years.

Bibing Buenaventura said the city’s flower farmers did not produce enough flowers to supply the public’s needs for this year’s All Saints’ and All Souls Day.  The demand was met because flowers arrived from other parts of the country.

Buenaventura, who is into the business of flowers, said some of her business friends have even bought flowers from a businessman that shipped from as far as Japan.

She said most of the flowers they sell were supplied to them by businessmen from nearby provinces and cities like Aurora in Zamboanga del Sur, Davao, Cebu, General Santos, Iligan and Manila.

She said this year’s produce from the flower farmers in the upland barangay of La Paz, 18.5 kilometers west of this city, was very low because the farmers’ ornamental plants did not bloom and could not adequately supply them.

“Last year, they gave each us more than 300 bundles of chrysanthemum.  This year, all they were able to give us was a maximum of 100 bundles,” she said. Each bundle consists of a dozen of chrysanthemum flowers, she said.

Buenaventura owns one of the more than 30 stalls that sell flowers on Mayor Ledesma Street in this southern port city.

She said the prices of flowers have increased this year compared to that of the previous year due to lack of supply from local producers.  She disclosed the price of a bouquet of flowers this year ranges from P500 to P700 compared from the previous year’s price of P250 to P300.

She said they don’t expect to have brisk sales this year due to the economic downturn of which almost everybody is affected.

“Our customers still buy flowers from us, but we observed it was not as much as they did in previous years,” Buenaventura said while arranging a bouquet of flowers at her stall.