Sirao Garden, Little Amsterdam

– Sto. Niño de Cebu’s blessed community

By  Virgilio C. Ventura

There is something therapeutic about witnessing the creative hands of God in the visually charming, colorful blooms, and verdant mountainous background of the original Sirao Garden, Little Amsterdam (the second garden) in Canada Drive, Ayala Heights, Barangay Sirao, Cebu City.  It is the most visited flower garden in Cebu that offers rest to weary souls escaping the buzzling sounds and polluted air of city life. Indeed, flower gardens have a way of lowering stress levels and anxiety.  Flowers can encourage social interactions and make us happier. Flowers attract positive emotions essential to people making empowering life and work decisions. Watching the colorful flowers, structures, and green landscape of the famed 8,000 sq. meters Sirao Garden immediately inspire smiles among the daily garden visitors.

Right from the roadside entrance of the garden, visitors are immediately greeted by the charming garden owner Elena Sy Chua.  Her arresting persona consistently offers a foretaste of what the flower garden can do to its daily crowd of local and international tourists.

History

As an erstwhile Cathay Pacific flight attendant, Elena stumbled upon a bargain purchase of 8,000 sq. meters of land in Barangay Sirao. Later, as she was nearing her retirement year from the airline, she visited her Sirao property and consequently get to know some of the informal settlers in the community who planted some vegetables and a kind of flower called celosia (locally called burlas) on her land. The initial celosia seeds that they planted were imported from Amsterdam as part of the Department of Agriculture’s cut-flower program.

“I wasn’t bothered by their presence because I was still too preoccupied with wandering the globe as an occasional tourist during my allocated flights. Over the years, I’ve gotten to know a lot of them and later have a deal with them to farm my land in exchange for a share of the harvest.  It was after my purchase of the adjacent 2,500 sq. meters property when they started to plant a variety of the celosia flower and sell them to augment Cebu’s flower supply during All Souls and All Saints Days celebrations.  The deeply flaming yellow or red celosia is said to symbolize boldness, immortality, affection, and friendship.  The celosia is indeed the official flower of the Sto. Niño,” said Elena who is also a fierce devotee of the Sto. Niño de Cebu.

The decision to continue cultivating the celosia came after an ugly incident captured in the social media.  The beauty of the celosia flowers caught the attention of some passersby who entered Elena’s property and took a video of the first harvest. Soon enough, the property was trespassed by a rowdy crowd who trampled upon the poor flowers.  Elena thereafter made an appeal through her Facebook page for people to respect her property and take care of the flowers. The stampede incident also forced her to rethink her options on what to do with her property upon retirement.

“Nearing my retirement age, I also started to visualize what my retirement life would be like.  What should I be doing after I put down my stewardess cap? Am I glad to finally have time to relax and control my schedules?  Or do I still want to work?  I can’t always be harassing my two teenage children with my mother-hen eyes.  I must be able to keep myself busy with a passion that can also comfortably sustain my lifestyle.  For 32 years I was very fortunate and grateful to have been employed by Cathay Pacific (CX), one of the best airlines in the world.  I will be missing CX so much as it molded me to who I am today,” quipped Elena.

Once again turning her eyes on her Barangay Sirao property, Elena met with the farmer-settlers and asked them if they are willing to work for her in turning her property into a flower garden that would attract entrance-paying tourists.  Expectedly, they readily welcomed her business idea as this could give them a steady income through part of the proceeds of the affordable entrance fee.  Inspired by the Keukenhof – the best garden in Holland, Elena fashioned the Sirao garden into a little Amsterdam in Cebu by building decorative windmills, a view deck, and other colorful attractions like the caring hands structure overlooking the green mountain ranges of Cebu.  Officially opened in January 2016 during the Sinulog Feast of the Sto. Niño, she used some of the garden’s entrance fee income to spend for wood-fencing and white painting of the entire property. Her travels in different countries also afforded her to source some of her flower seeds for the garden. Upon her retirement from Cathay Pacific in 2017, Elena has planted some 80 to 100 varieties of flowers and plants in her garden which include sunflowers, calla lilies, heliconias, cannas, dahlias, marigolds, chrysanthemums, cosmos, begonias, and a lot of others.

Community Value

            Yet, what really touched me about Elena’s story was how the garden established a bond between her and the informal settlers who sourced their survival from working on her garden.  The story reminds me on how people in times of crisis come together to take care of each other and form a community.  While the story of the birth of the Filipino nation predicated by the Philippine revolution of 1896, the internationally witnessed EDSA I People Power event of 1986, or the innocently red-tagged community pantries initiated by the 26-year old Ana Patricia Non last year are easily cited, we must not fail to reflect on the random acts of kindness, generosity, and compassion shared by strangers we often see during the destructive typhoons we experience on a yearly basis or of the pandemic lockdowns in our most recent memory.

            Elena’s story of how the Sirao Garden, Little Amsterdam started speaks of the same community values closely associated with the sharing of resources like land and labor, hopes and frustrations, failures and successes, faith, and redemption.

            “So true. While there will always be nearby competitors, who would have thought that through our desperate sense of individual survival we founded a strong community willing to make initial sacrifices to pursue a dream and the guts to make it come true?

            “The fertile land of Barangay Sirao was just there waiting for us to produce our needs.  All it needs was for us to take that first step of asking ourselves what we can do and the will to make things happen, TOGETHER.  Barangay Sirao’s informal farming settlers showed me the way to extend my imagination on what can be possible in my small property.  It was up to me to respond positively to their dream of living a decent life for their families as it was also for me to find my spot of post-Cathay Pacific retirement phase survival.  We take good care of each other.  This is really the essence of what a community is all about,” concluded Elena Sy Chua of Sirao Garden, Little Amsterdam.   END