FIFTEEN staff members of Bahay ni Maria in Laguna attended a refresher training on sustainable home gardening conducted by the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) last June 22, 2026.
The aim was to equip new personnel with skills to maintain the site’s garden.
The session at the Bahay ni Maria, which shelters abandoned elderly persons and children with special needs in Calamba, Laguna, was led by Anna Gale Vallez, program dpecialist at the Searca Research and Thought Leadership Department (RTLD), along with Sister Marie Sosoban of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Fatima, who joined the staff in the day’s work.
The training returned to fundamentals and expanded them. Participants moved through modules on organic farming, bio-intensive gardening, the establishment of a crop museum, edible landscaping, container gardening, and nutrient management. They also received a refresher on the production of organic plant growth solutions, materials meant to nourish soil without synthetic inputs.
Learning was set beside doing. In one part of the session, the staff assembled a basic hydroponics setup. Into that system, they set eggplant seedlings, feeding them with SNAP, the simple nutrient addition program hydroponic nutrient solution developed by the University of the Philippines Los Baños. The transparent tanks and slender roots became a living diagram of how water, nutrients, and care can produce food in limited space.
The June session was not the first. It followed a capacity-building activity on gardening held on Jan. 30, 2025. A retraining was arranged because most of the earlier participants were volunteers. In the months since, Bahay ni Maria has welcomed new staff members who will now carry on the work of keeping the garden. The refresher was meant to place that responsibility in steady hands.
“Searca is committed to advancing food and nutrition security, and our partnership with Bahay ni Maria reflects this commitment,” said Sharon Malaiba, Searca Partnerships Unit (PU) head. “With this refresher course on basic gardening, we can empower volunteers and staff at Bahay ni Maria with the practical skills needed to grow their own food.”
To support the work beyond the classroom, the denter turned over planting guides, materials, seedlings, and gardening supplies. The items were intended to sustain the home’s garden and to allow it to expand.
The initiative sits within Searca’s 12th Five-Year Development Plan, titled “Sustainable Transformation of Agricultural Systems through Innovation in Southeast Asia” or Sustain Southeast Asia.
Under that plan, Searca pursues food and nutrition security through practical, community-level projects. The program at Bahay ni Maria was spearheaded by the Searca PU and the RTLD as part of the center’s ongoing community relations work with the home.
Searca said that by enabling staff to produce fresh and nutritious food on site, the training seeks to place food closer to the table.