AVANT GARDENER
I’m always on the lookout for farmers and gardeners who have turned urban spaces into plant paradise, so when I heard about how janitor Rene Pajutro transformed the rooftop of the residential condominium he works in into a lush garden, I just had to meet him.
Pajutro works in one of the buildings in Poblacion, Makati. He started as a janitor in 2009 and has been there ever since. When he started, the rooftop was a bare concrete square. With the blessing of the building management, he slowly began adding greenery to the area and tending to them during his spare time.
He did this by rescuing near-dead plants that building residents had put in the trash and nursing them back to health.
The janitor got his love for gardening from his parents, who raised their family on a rice and vegetable farm in Mindoro.
The small rooftop, measuring maybe less than 100sqm, is filled with plants in different kinds of containers, from big clay pots to paint buckets to planters made from mineral water bottles and lined with coal and wood scraps, all of them saved from the garbage truck.
Different kinds of orchids hang from the interior wall, which is lined with various ornamental shrubs. There is a roofed area, part of which has been used as a trellis for passion fruit vine.
The walls are lined with plants that include begonias and snake plants, and there are also greens set in a central area so that visitors can walk around the garden and enjoy all the greenery. Pajutro doesn’t know all the names of the plants he grows, but he rattles off the ones that he does: “Serpentina, turmeric, ginger, lychee, lemon, avocado, pineapple, atis, calamansi, grapes, bougainvillea.” There are also small sampaloc trees, as well as a tall ornamental money tree. He’s also managed to grow an apple tree from seed.
There are also grapes, which, as of the interview, have fruited twice already. He prunes the grapes regularly to encourage the plants to flower.
Because most of the plants are rescued (they’ve been thrown away because they’re dead or dying), not all of them survive. An example is the malunggay tree, which Pajutro says was, “nabati,” a folk belief where calling attention to something, even with good intentions, can cause spirits to notice it and lead its health to suffer.
The garden is popular among building residents, many of whom have told Pajutro that they like hanging out there because “it feels like the province.” Many residents have attested to the garden’s ability to relieve their stress.
Pajutro is happy that the building management encourages the cultivation of the rooftop garden. The small harvests from the fruit trees are enjoyed by the staff, and sometimes, visitors are able to take home cuttings for their own gardens.
The maintenance man doesn’t believe in the myth of the black thumb. “They say if you have ‘hot’ hands, plants will die. That’s not true,” he says. “It’s how you care for your plants. If they lack care , they’ll die.” The rooftop garden has become such a popular spot that two nearby condominiums have followed suit.
Even though he works in Manila now, Pajutro is a living example of the saying, “You can take the man out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the man.” And the building residents and others who have drawn inspiration from him are thankful.