Whether you need the most typical calamansi plant or an exotic olive tree, you can find it all at Lunti, a seven-year-old plant nursery in Los Baños, Laguna.
In Filipino, lunti or luntian means green, and this plant nursery is a sea of green with all kinds of fruit-bearing trees, lumber trees, ornamental plants, culinary plants, and premium plants.
Cardava banana seedlings at Lunti. (Lunti Plant Nursery)
It was founded in 2016 by Jalex Hongco. “It started by accident,” Hongco said in Tagalog. “I was in Antique, the place I was born, there was someone who asked me if I wanted to sell plants so I started selling. I posted in the Facebook Marketplace.”
Hongco first started selling typical fruit trees, like banana trees. Even though the marketplace of Facebook wasn’t well known in 2016, he still had a lot of people inquiring and buying plants from him.
At the time, Hongco worked as an engineer, but he soon left that career. “When I realized it was self-sustainable, I resigned from my job to register the business,” he said. “The background of my family is farmers, and I also grew up on a farm so it wasn’t hard to switch.”
A plant tour all over the country
Lunti was formally registered as a business in 2017 and was based in Iloilo during that time. Hongco was joined by two others to fully form the management of Lunti.
In order to promote Lunti to more people, they had a golden idea. Why not hand-deliver plants to customers from far-off places and make it a whole event?
“Sometimes we had bulk buyers,” Hongco said. “If we used couriers, it would have been expensive and if you computed it, it was cheaper if we delivered it ourselves.”
That started Lunti’s drop off events all over the Philippines. “To GenSan, Mindanao, Davao, when we get there we would book conference rooms at fast food restaurants to promote our plants,” he said. “Of course, the attendees would be given snacks and then after the presentations, they would buy [plants].”
From 2017 to 2018, Lunti went all over the Philippines to drop off and promote their plants. (Lunti Plant Nursery)
Lunti announced the locations of their next drop off so potential customers could book their attendance for the presentation, as well as pre-order plants from the nursery. Despite having an idea of how many plants to bring at every location, there were plenty of times that Lunti ran out of plants to sell at their drop off events.
“Every time we visit a city, it’s really a waste if we don’t present [our plants],” he said. So from 2017 to 2018, the team traveled far and wide to spread the word about Lunti, while also proving the quality of their plants to multiple plantitos and plantitas. They’ve gone to Bulacan, Leyte, Ilocos, Bacolod, Palawan, Sorsogon, and many other major cities.
However, that stopped when the Covid-19 pandemic had put the country in lockdown. When this happened, Lunti moved their headquarters to Los Baños to better reach the majority of their customers and opted to partner with distributors so their plants can reach the people in farther areas.
A complete catalog
Lunti started off with a few fruit-bearing trees, but now they are a premier source of planting materials, and the plants they sell vary from the common ornamental plant to the rare, foreign variety of plants.
Their main garden is in Los Baños and they have another garden in Antique. They’ve also acquired partner propagators in order to meet the demand of their customers.
“What’s common for buyers, the bestsellers, are the ones that are cheap like the calamansi, banana because those are the staple products of the Philippines,” Hongco said. “Those are the common ones, but there are also those that are rare.
For the rare plants, there are less buyers, but since it’s for a niche market, the prices of the plants make up for the decrease in buyers. “It’s really for the enthusiasts or the collectors,” he explained. “For example, the jaboticaba or Brazilian grapes, olives, and maple. You can’t find plants like that native to our country.”
Lunti imports rare plants and obtains a mother plant. From there they persevere to propagate it through marcotting or grafting in order to acclimate it and make it available to the enthusiasts looking for them.
“Adult jaboticabas that already bear fruit can cost around P50,000,” Hongco said. “We also have its seedlings, but they are a challenge to grow. A two feet seedling costs around P1,500.”
One of the rare plants that Lunti has are its jaboticabas, which enthusiasts and collectors eagerly buy. (Lunti Plant Nursery)
Even if Lunti doesn’t have the plant you’re looking for, they look for ways to become a source for it in the future.
“As an agri company with a large following, the customers themselves are the ones looking for a particular plant,” Hongco said. “So, when we don’t have that plant, we start learning where to source it, how to propagate it, and how to multiply it. So we listen to customer demand and do market research.”
Lunti uses their connections abroad to have them send over the premium plants to the Philippines. When it comes to the country after a long period of travel, they make sure to recondition it to make it viable for propagation. Once that is achieved, the propagation starts and they are able to become a source for the exotic plant.
“It makes me happy to discover how to propagate a particular plant. That you discover how to multiply it, to improve it, and to make it bear fruit,” he said. “Especially our dwarf fruit-bearing plants that are able to bear fruit even if it’s still in a pot.”
Returning the blessing
When the pandemic hit, the plantito and plantita trend was explosive. Lunti could hardly keep up with the demand with the team they originally had, so they gave jobs to people who lost their jobs due to the lockdown.
At their peak, Lunti was able to earn above P1 million in a month. Due to this, they were able to help sponsor the bantay-kalsada troops during lockdown, where they supplied food for the staff.
Lunti went beyond becoming a plant nursery and explored farm ventures such as planting crops and starting a piggery business in provinces where they were sure the community could benefit from. They also built a restaurant to provide a farm-to-table dining experience.
Lunti thrived and became courageous to try these ventures. However, it wasn’t always a success.
Lunti staff at a farm visit after delivering mango seedlings. (Lunti Plant Nursery)
“We had piggeries in Aklan, Batangas, and Antique. But when ASF came, it became a loss,” Hongco said. :”Even our venture partners experienced that loss.”
The restaurant they established also had to close down after only six months of operation due to the lockdown. “It’s already been two years that it hasn’t operated, and we can’t open it again because the things there are already old,” he said. “It was a fortuitous event, it’s something we just didn’t want to happen.”
Lunti experienced several failures, but they remain strong in spirit. For now, although the plantito/plantita trend has died down, they are still able to profit from their regular sales. “Even though we have lots of competitors, people still choose Lunti because they want to be sure of the quality,” he said.
But Lunti continues to think of new ventures that can be helpful for the community. They have a new project in the making that will help connect farmers from far off provinces to the central market. This project will be able to cater to those who want to buy for personal consumption and for retailers.
“Our country is an agricultural country so for a lot of people, agriculture is easy to do. Even for those who aren’t educated, that’s what a lot of people are exposed to,” he said. “So we support those who need help. As long as they are hardworking, then we can take them to work for the farm or the garden.”
Lunti has a lot of plans, and what’s clear is that they seek to help the community benefit from agriculture and nature. Aside from being a premier source of common and exotic plants, they are also a source of hope for many.
Photos courtesy of Lunti