A plants and arts festival to open at Q.C. Memorial Circle

Calling all Millennials! Here's another kind of festival that's tailormade according to your hearts and greenthumbs' desire!

Some 10,000 pots of flowers and endemic, indigenous, and Philippine hybrid plants will be showcased at Quezon Memorial Circle for the Hortikultura Filipina 2018, a plants and arts festival organized by the Philippine Horticultural Society Inc., a non-profit organization of plant lovers.

The horticultural festival, which happens from February 3 to 11  claims to be the largest horticultural event to be held in the country.

The event spans all four show gardens at the Quezon Memorial Circle: the Hardin ng mga Bulaklak (Flower Garden), the Tropical Garden, Runnex Elevated Garden and the Rock Garden. Special exhibits will be scheduled at the nearby QCX Museum.

For a P50 admission fee (with discounts for senior citizens, students, and PWDs), guests can roam around 6 hectares of flower gardens, bonsais, tropical landscaping, terrariums, and commercial trade shows. And for a P30 more, guests can have some fun taking selfies  at the beautiful “flower fiesta” collection hosted by the Allied Botanical Corporation.

Other areas of the exhibit will feature landscapes in competition, cacti and succulents, and urban farming. The Department of Trade and Industry will have seminars on plant propagation and sustenance, and lectures and counseling on business start-ups on horticulture. Farms from all over the country will have booths set up to sell cacti, succulents, orchids and other plants.

At least 10 vertical gardens will be designed by groups of UP Landscape Architecture students and Philippine Horticulture Society members. Tiffany Cham, wildlife breeder and creator-partner of the World of Creepy Crawlies at the Manila Ocean Park, will also display a number of her terrariums and exotic animals.

Philippine Horticultural Society Inc. show organizing committee member Nelson Cabangon hopes the event will inspire more people to take up gardening and to promote horticulture as a viable industry. “We’re encouraging people to come and see the flowers. if you come and see those plants, and some are for sale, we’re showing you how it can be done. We want to inspire people to get into it,” he shares.

Here’s a preview of some of the displays at the HortiKultura Filipina 2018:

— LA, GMA News