In Pangasinan, butterfly garden spreads wings

BUTTERFLIES doing their work in the Ubaldo couple’s garden. CONTRIBUTED BY WILLIE LOMIBAO

VILLASIS, Pangasinan—Pastor Dominador Ubaldo and his wife, Joy, make time every day to visit their garden in the farming village of Lipay just across the Agno River here, traveling from their house in neighboring Rosales town.

They come here to check on their orchids, their ornamental plants and, most importantly, the butterflies they raise on a half hectare lot just behind the house of Joy’s parents.

“They actually could not stay away from their garden for long,” says Bing Ramos, Ubaldo’s cousin, who lives near the garden. The couple would spend hours enjoying the place they have named “Minuyungan,” an Ilocano word for “garden.”

“We have always been passionate about creating our own butterfly garden,” says Ubaldo, 50, a pastor of the Church of God World Missions Philippines in the village.

He is also administrator of the family-owned Tayug Family Hospital in Tayug town, where Joy, 47, a doctor, is the hospital’s medical director.

Ubaldo says that every time he and his wife travel here and abroad, they would always look for a butterfly garden.

Then, six years ago, they met a friend from Marinduque province who helped them set up their own butterfly garden.

“We had this (vacant lot) before,” Ubaldo says. The area used to hold a small cage that was swept by flood in October 2009.

Ubaldo built a new, massive cage on the same spot, that included a breeding section and was big enough for butterflies to fly freely. He now has 15 species of butterflies in that cage.

CONTRIBUTED BY WILLIE LOMIBAO

Ubaldo also built a seminar room for visitors. “It’s not really that difficult to maintain a butterfly garden. You just have to have time for it,” he says.

What is important is to make sure that the garden has a host plant for each butterfly species.

“Butterflies lay eggs only in their host plants. So, they will always look for their own host plants and you will have to make sure that those plants are there,” Ubaldo says.

Butterfly eggs hatch into caterpillars two to three weeks after they are laid. The caterpillar consumes for another two weeks before it pupates for two weeks more, until it turns into a butterfly.

“A butterfly lives only for two weeks. But if it’s healthy, it could lay around 800 eggs in two weeks,” Ubaldo says.

What was meant to be a private garden for the couple and their young children has been drawing tourists and hobbyists. Their curiosity was triggered when the couple mounted a butterfly sanctuary exhibit during the SM Rosales’ Earth Day celebration in May. “We have been also receiving calls and text messages inquiring about a tour,” Ubaldo says.

He says they never consider the garden as an enterprise but the attention has convinced him there’s a market. At a friend’s wedding, each guest was gifted with a butterfly, which they set free after making a wish for the newlyweds at the ceremony, he says.