FROM love to other symbolic meanings of flowers based on shape and color, from roses to tulips—basically all of these blooms symbolize deep affection regardless of occasion.
During the Edsa People Power revolution back in February 1986, flower-bearing women overwhelmed heavily armed soldiers with buds of flowers tied with yellow ribbons. The rest is history.
As a farm boy who grew up side by side with beds of roses that my father, the late Leonardo Perante of the famed Perante oranges, cultivated in our backyard for experimental purpose and for love of the fragrant blooms, I saw how he propagated roses of the American and Holland strains.
However, his experimental plots gradually expanded as his hobby quickly grew into commercial proportions. I remember many family friends and town mates coming in cars to buy fresh roses for their loved ones, most of them bachelors who came to pick up their orders of red roses. At that time, there was no such thing as flower arrangements, but bundles by the dozen.
I was in grade school when during weekends, I would go to the Bayombong public market in Nueva Vizcaya, to sell roses in buckets. Most of my customers were housewives, who usually dropped by my stall before they went home after shopping. Every income I earned was more than enough for my school allowance the following week. Unwittingly, I was into the cutflower business, minus the tax receipts.
When I was in high school, my cutflower enterprise even grew further when my female classmates would order, nearly every day, buds of roses for their friends celebrating birthdays. I never realized why people give flowers to loved ones.Totally naïve, I was only after the sales.
As a teenage heartthrob, it was in college when I learned to give bouquets of red roses in exchange for hugs and kisses. They were simple delights many girls were up to. I realized its powerful charm because I was always a winner.
As a budding press photographer back in 1996, I was quite lucky to be one of about 35 journalists who covered the first Baguio Flower Festival, which was later called “Panagbenga,” a Kankanaey term for “blooming.”
I met Efren Chato, then the general manager of King Louis Farms that specialized in potted flowering plants like roses and tulips. It was my first time to see tulips grown under dark rain shed.
The Island Rose Farm of the Andayas in Tagaytay is home to locally bred world-class roses grown under glass green houses. It was my first time, as well, to see roses grown in such sophisticated housing.
Back in my home province of Nueva Vizcaya, an enterprising salad vegetable farmer from the upland town of Kayapa who used to visit our farm, apparently saw the potentials of growing the lovely blooms in commercial scale. The town’s semi temperate climate was a perfect environment for growing cutflowers, be they roses or chrysanthemums. He followed suit. The cutflower industry in the upland town spread like wild fire and became one of the town’s top cash earners.
As a usual trend, imported blooms command killing prices on occasions that need flowers. But homegrown cutflowers have substantially dislodged imported blooms like those from Australia, Thailand and Holland by the homegrown varieties cultivated in Benguet, Tagaytay, Kayapa, Nueva
Vizcaya and now San Mateo, Isabela.
In Sinamar Norte in San Mateo, Isabela, Lourdes Agpaoa pioneered in 1988 what is today a blooming industry in the village known for the production of enormous mung beans. Forty households, comprised of Agapaoa’s younger relatives, are engaged in the cutflower industry, raising mums in their respective backyards. What started as a women’s enterprise became men’s main business as the industry grew into commercial scale.
Better known as Pinakbet Capital of the North, the vegetable-growing town of Roxas, Isabela, may soon become a cutflower garden in the making, once home backyards in the municipality will be growing cut-flowers side by side “Bahay Kubo” vegetable strains.
The town’s First Lady, Jan Calderon, wife of Roxas Mayor Benedict Calderon, said her group—composed of the municipality’s women organizations—is eyeing the backyard production of cutflowers that could grow in the town’s climatic conditions and serve as ornamental borders for the regular beds of vegetables cultivated in backyards on semi-commercial scale.
“If the neighboring town of San Mateo could grow cutflowers, we can, of course, grow the same,” Calderon said.
She admitted, however, that using cutflowers as decorative materials on special occasions is yet to be developed more in town.
“While we keep priorities on our vegetable industry, we see the potential of growing cutflowers in our home backyards not only as landscape accents but because of its high commercial value and additional income for our women, during All-Saints’ Day and Valentine’s Day but for other occasions that need flowers. Growing flowers does not only enhance local homes, but saves a lot of money usually spent in buying expensive flowers,” she said.
The cutflower industry has seen bright prospects as a cottage backyard project for local women dominated by housekeepers.
Image credits: Leonardo Perante II