SM Skygarden: blending 'green' p.r. with a yearning for breathing space

he best time to visit SM City Baguio's new rooftop Skygarden is middle-late afternoon when the sky is overcast. As a photographer, of course. my bias is obvious: it's the best time of day and the best condition under which to shoot--oftentimes referred to as the "golden hour."  It's when the difference between the highlights and the shadows is the least (called "exposure latitude" for you fotog students). For practical reasons, too, it is when the average mall rat would most likely be indoors sipping coffee or in the middle of  some crappy movie at the theater. There would be fewer people, and usually of the quieter sort. Come out here early, or about lunch break  and you'll be bathed in a cacophony of squeals and giggles from the millennial generation.  

   The moment SM City Baguio announced the looming opening of its latest "crown jewel" attraction, I knew there would be mixed feelings among Baguio folk about it. It so happens, too, that it is opening when the city is still not yet fully re-opened to tourism. So the first people to behold this much-anticipated Skygarden are mostly locals--and it is deathly hard to impress Baguio people when it comes to "nature" and "paradise" issues. 

SM went to great lengths creating a Baguio garden, and for that they
get an"A" for effort.  But if you turn around and look out, the scenic
panorama of the real green Baguio is simply unbeatable, something
impossible to simulate.

   I have lived in Baguio for 54 years now. I have seen and lived through its greenest years. I also don't come from a privileged class, my single-parent mother supported my sister and I working as a caretaker of beautiful homes owned by others.      There was an era in Baguio's halcyon days when, being a true Summer Capital of the Philippines, most of the prettiest homes here were owned by wealthy Manileños. They came up once or twice a year--bakasyunistas--and you could spot them from a mile away. Wearing flowery Hawaiian shirts (totally trendy in the 60s and 70s), Peggy Sue crescent sunglasses, short pants, wide-brimmed buri hats and toting Kodak instamatic cameras (no Android phones yet). They looked like a bunch of pilgrims stepping off a cruise ship in the Bahamas. It was a shock for them to find out there was nothing common at all between the Baguio and the Caribbean climates.    

   Absent from the city fifty weeks out of a year, these post-war nouveau riche nevertheless spent huge fortunes maintaining their summer vacation homes in Baguio City. Every one of them had flower gardens (in the west they're called "yards"), some painstakingly built around exotic themes like a Japanese garden complete with tiny a bridge over a small wishing well, and such. Baguio's community of caretaker families were the implementors of those concepts, many of them even going the full distance into the flower business. 

Say what you can in criticism, it's arguably still the most 
beautiful viewdeck anywhere in the country today. The SM
Skygarden is destined to evoke strong reactions, for and 
against that it's probably wise to consider that if you didn't
like it, it probably simply wasn't meant for you.

   My own mother was a green thumb. If she planted it, whatever it was, it grew and bore flowers. Still a sprightly eighty-seven year old grandmother now, she had been a caretaker all her young life. She knew every ornamental flower species that exists better than a botanist with a Ph.D. So when I brought her to the Skygarden, I knew her bar was set very high.  

   We were still in the foyer leading out to the rooftop terrace where the Skygarden is and my mother noticed an anomaly right away. It didn't take her ten seconds to point to two rows of hanging plants and say,"these plants don't really grow on a wall" Then I said the dumbest thing: "They can if they're made of plastic" like I thought she didn't know.  

    She said, "I know they're plastic, anak, because the leaves of the real thing was dark green on the top and spotted light green on the underside. I'm just saying those two kinds of plants never really grow on a wall."

The implementation is close enough, based on the 3D
diorama SM showed the public about a year ago, minus
the flying albatrosses. 

   I read my mother wrong. She wasn't criticizing the Skygarden, she liked it. That's why it bothered her to see it being so inauthentic and unconvincing.  Once out in the open,  we found ourselves standing on AstroTurf  artificial grass (or some wickedly-similar Chinese knockoff) made from narrow flat strings  of polyethylene meant to mimic Bermuda grass. I asked her if that was "garden-correct" she said it could always be. A lot of bakasyunistas expected to see the same kind of grass in Baguio that they saw in Manila. So Baguio caretakers, wanting to please their employers, struggled to culture the species on Baguio's bitter black soil. The Bermuda grass demanded acidic lime soil, close to sandy--it does come from Bermuda. So my mother said back in the day she would often go to a nearby construction site and ask for a bucket of the contractor's river sand. She mixed that with our rich black loam and with the 2-soil cocktail somehow managed to coax the intolerant Bermuda grass to grow a demure half-inch or so.  

As evening falls and the lighted fountains spring to life, it 
becomes a spectacular outdoor light show.  Heavy jackets and
hoodies compulsory in the nippy Baguio evening air. 

 This is why Bermuda grass grew only in small patches in Baguio. Even in Camp John Hay and Baguio Country Club, only the greens (where you putt your last strokes into the hole) were carpeted in Bermuda grass. They could not grow it in large-enough swaths to cover the entire golf course. 

   The AstroTurf is totally appropriate for the Skygarden though. It could take the beating of a million shoes stepping on it all day. Even my mother agreed that as hardy and tough as Baguio's local crab grass was, it would be no match to mall-grade foot traffic. "Just look at Melvin Jones," she said, referencing the city's football field in Burnham Park. Actually, it's a shame to even call it a football field because of the park managers' inability to keep it covered with grass. Mother nature often does it without help, but as soon as the field manages to grow a delicate blanket of new growth, the city government promptly commits the place to everything from a rock concert to a fleamarket. Endlessly trampled underfoot the poor grass keeps trying to grow back, fighting an ever-losing battle of thriving on neglect.  

You can bring the pampered pooch out for 
a walk in the Skygarden but the furry mutt
has to be diapered.

   Skygarden's artificial grass may not impress a grasshopper but it will stay lush and green forever, I remarked. My mother dissented,"in six months it will be bleached white by the sun, they'd have to re-dye it green every so often."

  The trees in Skygarden passed muster, as far as mother was concerned. She said they were "perennials" and "stubby-root" varieties which grow really leafy crowns but whose roots didn't need to shoot deep into the soil. They will do fine in their constricted giant plantboxes but would take about two years to grow a decent crown, "I'll be 89 already  by the time these trees give shade," she said. The picture of these trees giving shade didn't excite me as much as hearing my mother declare that she  intended to be around to see that.

Second only to the karaoke, the staple obsession of the 
typical Baguio denizen these days is taking selfies. The
Skygarden is the selfie-taker's dream, every nook and
corner a perfect floral backdrop. Too bad, the obligatory
face mask and face shield under the "new normal" makes
all selfies mostly incognito for the time being. 

    Browsing Facebook that night, I read tons of unkind comments about the Skygarden from environmentalists, the so-called "hug-a-tree-kill-a-baby" demographic group who have no trouble reconciling pro-choice with pro-trees. Make no mistake: I do get it. It is lamentable that something as beautiful as the Skygarden would actually be standing on the graves of a few hundred real pine trees that used to be Luneta Hill's mini-forest cover. More subtly, Luneta Hill used to be one of those hillsides that starting in late November would be festooned with bright yellow sunflowers. Those sunflower bushes--marapait in the local vernacular--are gone now, too.

How will this artificial grass fare in the punishing 30%
Baguio humidity? Can it survive the rainy months out
in the elements? I think it will do just fine. They use the
same material to line fresh produce baskets in the 
supermarket that are damp all year-round.

 In fairness--and not necessarily in defense of SM--I did take "before-and-after" pictures of the thickest of those tree stands on the Governor Pack Road side of this mountain. And I can see that SM's landscapers and project engineers took very careful steps to keep the biggest trees--they are, in fact, still there today. (see below)

 This whole "green architecture" movement that is getting a lot of traction among property developers is a bigger challenge than many realize. Everywhere developers boast of designing "green buildings" and I know some of them are sincere.  However, the average person does not really know what the  "green concept" in building designs is all about. Few care to appreciate that a building has a method of collecting rainwater and storing it in large underground cisterns, or that its business units use water evaporator-type of air-conditioners rather than the type that uses ozone-layer damaging refrigerants.   If a mall required food stalls to install grease traps in their kitchen sinks, few would even care. Double-layered glass panels improved indoor temperature control, permitting less use of electric fans and ventilators.  Motion-activated faucets on lavatories or hand dryers minimized wasteful use of water and electricity. Overhead LED-lights to indicate "taken" or "vacant" parking slots reduced your aimless trolling around the carpark while your idling engine burned gasoline uselessly. All of these are elements of green design and the common denominator among them is they are not openly visible.

Thoughtfully, SM incorporated a rooftop coffeshop at the
Skygarden. Nothing calls for a piping hot cup of freshly-
brewed coffee more than a sight as picturesque as Baguio.

    Unfortunately, your typical armchair environmentalist demands to see green innovation made visible, not just discreetly applied, no matter how effectively. The premium in evaluation is the color green. As asinine as it is to suggest that one color is less toxic than another, in the public relations calculus impression is often more convincing than the truth.  I think that's why shopping malls all over the world try to incorporate as many green components--as in literally green in color--in their building claddings, ornamentation, signages, and overall theme-implementation. 

In the glow of Baguio's afternoon "golden hour" the Skygarden
bursts into a kaleidoscope of artificial blooms. Scentless, of
course, but totally safe for all pollen-allergic people and those
with histamine-triggered asthma. 

  I think the Skygarden  would have done just as well if all it had were rows of lawn chairs and  a few green beach umbrellas. Like many modern buildings, SM City Baguio is actually green in many unseen aspects already. But as long as one is looking for aesthetics to butress science, I suppose plastic foliage couldn't possibly be any more offensive than a gallery of  framed pictures of flowers in an exhibit.

   My mother had the last thing to say and it was kind to SM.  She said, "I think its intelligent they use plastic wall flowers within picking reach, and the real potted plants where people can't reach them." I hadn't really noticed. Indeed, in the vertical contact areas is where you find banks of plastic ferns and golden bushes. The real palmeras and dragon tails  are out on the ledges. Whatever the floral arrangement, the place is a fresh breath of air even though in Baguio the air quality inside the mall is proudly the same as outside. That's because the city has been blessed by God with all-natural centralized air conditioning system.  Nobody can outclass God in the all-natural category.

If SM's green 'pr' is to be believed, the true greening
that is making a real difference isn't happening at the
Skygarden but wherever they said they intend to plant
a half-million trees. I wouldn't mind photographing
and writing about that--if i knew where it was. 

    The mall was thoughtful enough to integrate  a couple of coffeeshops in this refreshing rooftop, too. The biggest irony is that no matter how hard SM tries to simulate a "Baguio garden" it was all really unnecessary.  All one has to do is turn around and look out--the view of the real green Baguio panorama out there is simply spectacular. No one can beat that. Not even SM. And it is all that meets my mother's high bar of expectation.  The plastic flowers, the AstroTurf grass--they could never fool my mother. Or even a caterpillar. 

Work proceeded round-the-clock in 2018 during the construction of SM City Baguio's annex.
Although there were some tree cuttings, engineers worked gingerly around the biggest of
them to avoid having to cut older timber. I double-checked--yes, the biggest trees on the 
Governor Pack Road side are, indeed, still there.

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON