Located eight kilometers away from the city proper, the La Union Botanical Garden can be God’s Little Corner in these parts– where His awesome creations are at their most beautiful– but which was put up with a little help from his people.
 

Mayor Mary Jane Ortega narrated that the establishment of the Botanical Garden started sometime in the early 1970s. A group of young Japanese volunteers planted 1,500 mango trees in a denuded part of the forest, walking for an hour to reach the place just to plant the trees which they believed can be used for reforestation.
 

Fast forward to 1994.  Mayor Ortega, then a college teacher, dreamed of putting up a mini-zoo to teach the children to be kind to animals “because if you are kind to animals, you become kind to people. You develop a culture of kindness.”  
 

But her husband Victor (then a congressman) turned down her proposal, citing meager budget and saying it was the last priority in his program for development. “He said what were needed were livelihood (programs), infrastructures and the like.”
 

However,  the Congressman had a change of heart after attending an international conference on environment in Indonesia. “He realized that the environment should be prioritized and when he arrived from Indonesia, he was already enthusiastic about my project,” the mayor recalled.
 

Things fell into place when a friend entered into the picture with a vision similar to Ortega’s dream. Romualdo del Rosario, then division chief of the National Museum”s botany division, urged her to put up a botanical garden (where the mini zoo will be housed). At that time, there was no botanical garden in the country yet.
 

“We had the area – a 10-hectare land where the mango trees stood, a funding of P5 million (P1 million a year for five years) from my husband’s budget, and a person to plan and manage the garden. We buckled down to work,” the Mayor said.
 

So transforming a forest – part of which had been planted by the Japanese volunteers with mango trees and part of which was denuded — into a botanical garden, started.
 

Years of work resulted in the creation of a Botanical Garden with gardens with various themes (such as palmery, evergreen, orchidarium) picnic grounds, museum of natural history and extensive collection of flora, both local and imported. Visitors –many of them students from different places – come for eco-walks, to study the plants, to hike in the mountain, for picnics or simply to enjoy the sights and sounds in the place. A favorite site for educational tours and field trips for residents of the city and the nearby provinces, the place boasts of more than 700 fauna species.
 

But the work is far from over. In 2001, the provincial government donated the adjoining 10 hectares to the city and it was also transformed as part of the botanical garden.
 

At present, the Botanical Garden is being managed by the La Union Botanical Garden Foundation with the city government funding its operations. Some 23 workers tend the Garden but Ortega said it is God who is the Main Gardener.
 

“There is this patch of beautiful pink flowers and I was told that its scientific name was Clitoria ternatea. Beside it were another patch of white flowers with spike namd penisitum.  When you see them, you will know why they’re named that way. Then there’s the lantana  patch and the sili-like (pepper) flowers and all around were butterflies. I asked (Rosario) who was the gardener in the area and he said ‘none because the plants are weeds.’ So I said God is the best gardener.”
 

What’s the difference between a botanical garden and a plain garden?  Ortega explained:” A botanical garden is a center for research and we have graduate students who made studies on mushrooms, herbal species, butterflies and others. All plants are labeled including their scientific names while in a flowering garden, the plants are not labeled. But it is also an area for recreation and a place for children to start learning to love (plants).”
 

She disclosed that a mushroom species was first see in the Garden and has been properly identified by the botanists and that the doctoral student who studied herbal medicines is now and herbalist.
 

Ortega said she loved plants, a trait cultivated in her early childhood when her mother would tell her to crush the carabao dung used to fertilize to rose garden and vegetable plants in the family’s Quezon City residence.
But she conceded that while she loved plants, “the feeling is not mutual” because the plants she bought would wilt or not bloom at all. “But I love the concept and I know the importance of environment,” she declared, adding that when she was the national president of the Inner Wheel Club of the Philippines and was not a mayor yet, she had adopted the Botika sa Barangay and Zero Waste Management programs.
 

She claimed that she is the number one critic of the Botanical Garden although she does not meddle in its management. She also happily noted that her dream of having a mini-zoo (aviary) has been fulfilled and that the entrance fees of P10 for adults and P5 for children are really just enough to feed the birds.
 

Ortega disclosed that three years ago, one of the young Japanese volunteers who planted the mango seedlings was invited to Batac, Ilocos Norte. He asked that he will be brought to San Fernando City to find out what has happened to the trees that he and his colleagues planted.
 

He thought he was going to walk for an hour to the area as he did 34 years ago. But he was surprised that the road was well-paved and the trees he planted are standing proud and tall amid the Botanical Garden. More so, he was touched and elated to see that a Japanese Garden was established and was dedicated to him and his friends.
 

The young man turned out to be Osamu Nakagaki, then the country director of the Japan International Cooperation Agency. He invited Ortega to Japan to study the one village, one product concept. He also arranged for a sisterhood  agreement between San Fernando City and Nijon Matsu in Japan.
 

“Did you see the confluence of events? How could this happen without God’s intervention?” she said of the Japanese volunteers planting the trees and the eventual visit of one of them more than 30 years later.
 

Ortega said the city’s vision for it to be the Botanical Garden City is fast becoming  a reality. Indeed, just a few kilometers outside the urban city proper is ecologically well-preserved, with tall trees and plants lining up the hills and the plains.