Monday, July 02, 2007 Constant gardener By Mayette Q. Tabada
DRAGONFLIES love this man.
His earliest memory, at the age of three, was walking into the kitchen of his ama (grandmother). Any greens he got his hands on—alugbate, kangkong, spinach—he slipped into the susceptible earth outside the old house in San Jose Street.
And so it is that the backyard garden coaxed by the child, under the tutelage of his grandmother’s green wisdom, multiplied into the manifold evergreen emeralds seeding the grown man’s repute.
The 44-year-old architect is behind the Jaime Chua Garden Corporation, which set up the ballroom landscape for prominent launchings, which include the Molave Highlands and Ayala Heights at Marriott Hotel, the Hilton Cebu Resort & Spa at Waterfront Cebu City Hotel, and Kishanta AboitizLand at Marco Polo Plaza Cebu Hotel.
Aside from these man-made interior landscapes that require the hauling of truckloads of ornamental plants and cut flower arrangements—the Ayala Heights ceremony called for 15 trucks of plants—it is the green swards he created in the first-class neighborhoods of Ma. Luisa Estate Park, North Town Homes, Paseo San Ramon, and Beverly Hills Subdivision that makes Jaime the gardener with the tightest year-round schedule.
Jaime was still an architecture undergraduate at the University of San Carlos when he tackled his first major commission to renovate the garden of a family owning a popular clothing brand.
Today, with corporate clients in Cebu, Manila and Iloilo, the bachelor can only travel abroad once or twice a year. Inevitably, he ends up visiting horticultural shows, exhibits and farms, where he learns from other enthusiasts and collects new plants to bring home and culture.
For this year’s Asean Summit, he was commissioned to landscape the Portofino Resort in Mactan, a major summit venue.
As a member of the Cebu Orchid Society, Jaime’s landscaping entries have earned the top prize, consecutively from 1994 to 1997 and then again from 2001 to 2005. Jaime is also active in the Cebu Ornamentals and Cut Flowers Multipurpose Cooperative Inc.
Despite the green awards and even greener returns, Jaime is at his element when walking among his plants. His company owns three farms supplying his landscaping clients and walk-in plant lovers: the 2,500-square meter lot in Pilit, Cabancalan, Mandaue, the 3.5-ha. nursery in Nangka, Balamban, that’s planted to palm trees and grass, and the 1.7-ha. Mawmawan, Busay showcase of foreign exotics, rare native varieties, and even the latest green trends, such as the bamboo poles snapped up in Manila.
In these naturalistic Edens, the man shows flashes of the former kitchen forager whose green gift summons back dragonflies and other messengers attesting that life’s balance is restored.
The green-inclined may reach Jaime Chua at 0917-320-1392.
