Baguio police leads urban gardening

HEEDING the call of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte for all Filipinos to help in the country’s food production, the different offices of the Baguio City Police Office (BCPO) have set up their urban gardens at their respective grounds and offices.

Dubbed “Gulayan sa Presinto”, the police are growing tomatoes, eggplant, string beans and pechay which they also harvest and cook for their food at the office. Small gardens are established and fixed by the policemen at the stations outside the central business district while the offices at the city proper are planting vegetables using pots hanged on walls as vertical gardens.

Senior superintendent Ramil Saculles, Director of BCPO, said the program is supported by the Department of Agriculture (DA), which provided the seedlings.

There are no open spaces for gardening

at the BCPO main office beside the city hall, Saculles said. “I plant vegetables on pots at the cemented flat roof of the building. What we grow, we also harvest and cook.”

He said growing plants is a good hobby and relaxing activity which eases the policemen’s task of maintaining the city’s peace and order.

“We are not just producing food but it is also our way of helping green the environment,” Saculles said.

Recently, the city government also passed an urban gardening and edible plant production contest ordinance, which encouraged residents in the 128 barangays to establish small gardens to produce food.

The Urban Gardening ordinance authored by Councilor Leandro Yangot, Jr., chairman of the City Council Committee on Market, Trade and Agriculture, empowers residents to be aggressively involved in growing food and medicinal plants among households.

Yangot said barangay residents should maximize available spaces to put up their own urban gardens that will serve as an attraction and source of food and medicine.

“Urban gardens in the households will allow the people to also help the local government reduce the volume of generated waste because the materials that will be used to propagate the plants can be recycled containers, among others, thereby significantly helping improve garbage disposal,” Yangot added.

He encouraged residents to plant edible and medicinal plants to significantly contribute in helping clean the air and sustain the greening of the city’s environment.