Albay villages win in landscaping contest

By Cet Dematera

Four villages in Albay won the major prizes in the Barangay Project Season 1 of the Search for Edible Landscaping in the 2nd congressional district of the province.

The rural village of Bariw in Camalig town grabbed the first prize followed by Namantao and Salvacion, first- and second-runner ups, respectively, both rural barangays in Daraga, Albay.

Despite being located at the urban district of Albay, Barangay Ilawod West of Legazpi City won as the 3rd runner-up.

Ilawod West Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) chairperson and president of the Legazpi City SK Federation, Mae Ling Teh together with the members of the SK council and punong barangay Malou Baltazar received the certificate of recognition with cash from Rep. Joey Salceda and Mayor Noel E. Rosal during the awarding ceremony on July 7 at the El Miro de Shei Integrated Farm in Salugan, Camalig Albay.

Teh said that she is very grateful to the edible landscaping project of Salceda for involving the youth sector in communal gardening that resulted to the very productive activities and provided sufficient healthy foods.

“We consider it a bonus when we landed third runner up despite that our barangay is located in the urban district of Legazpi City,” Teh said.

Those villages that landed overall champion and runner ups in the edible landscaping competition are situated in rural areas that are readily suitable for planting vegetables and root crops.

“The landscaping efforts of the edible garden spearheaded by all the officers and members of the SK located within the 200 square meters lot owned by the Acuna family in our barangay was started in April and we are now harvesting different varieties of vegetables” Teh said.

The communal gardening project is the search for edible landscaping across the 2nd district of Albay launched by the office of Salceda in order to create attractive landscapes and at the same time provide sufficient healthy foods vis-à-vis its economic benefits.

She said that Salceda’s office and the City Agriculture Office (CAO) have provided assorted vegetable seedlings particularly squash, petchay, sili, Eggplant, sitao and tomatoes, “while the office of the Barangay 13 SK officials has chipped in fertilizers as its counterpart”, Teh added.

SK Legazpi City Chapter is known to join regularly in all the tree planting activities and other environmental events of the city even as it conducts trainings on how to cope and recover with the prevailing (Covid-19) pandemic.