Workers at ABC’s demonstration farm make sure that its flower garden is abloom as visitors arrive. —PHOTOS BY WILLIE LOMIBAO
Tayug, Pangasinan—The country’s first sunflower maze built by a seed company is fast changing the lives of people in the farming village of C. Lichauco here.
Long lines of cars and droves of visitors began to swarm the once sleepy place in February. Now, children who used to play on the narrow road stick to the side to avoid them, Mayor Tyrone Agabas said.
Once reticent residents are offering help to those trying to find their way to the field of flowers. “People have learned to adapt to the arrival of visitors,” Agabas said.
C. Lichauco (population: 1,196) is located on a vast plain 10 kilometers south of the town center. It hosts Allied Botanical Corp. (ABC), the vegetable seed producer that built the 1,000-square-meter sunflower maze and laid out vegetable and flower gardens in its 3-hectare demonstration farm.
The visual treat of golden blooms is enough reason for the tourist rush when the maze was opened to the public on Feb. 17.
Some 1,500 visitors came on weekdays and 5,000 more on weekends during the first two weeks, said village council member Cristina Vidad.
The number peaked on Feb. 26, when more than 13,000 visitors appeared, their vehicles lined up along the 2-km stretch of the road. Two days later, the maze was closed as the rush of tourists damaged some plants while rain sloughed off the sunflower petals.
Extra income
Still, the visitors came, most of them begging the farmhands to allow them a tour, Vidad said. “We could not stop them, especially when they told us that they had traveled all the way from Metro Manila or from other provinces,” she said.
The influx has meant extra income for the residents, Agabas said. Vacant lots double as pay parking areas, while pedicab drivers reported having more passengers since the sunflower attraction was put up.
“There are 30 of us here,” said one pedicab driver. “We ferry passengers to and from the town proper or to Sta. Maria [town] and even to SM in Carmen.”
More people visited the flower farm during Holy Week when the sunflowers were in full bloom. So far, the farm has been hosting an average of 700 guests on weekdays and 3,000 on weekends since it reopened on March 25.
One tricycle driver, however, is worried that the village’s name, C. Lichauco, may fade from public memory.
“Tourists do not seem to know our barangay. They don’t tell us they are going to C. Lichauco. They tell us, ‘We are going to the sunflower [maze],’” the driver said.