By ZAC B. SARIAN

Do you have an old, old bougainvillea in your garden that has developed a big trunk and is so monstrous you would like to eliminate it? Cut it down and throw it away? Use it as fuel wood? Wait a minute. Don’t make that drastic move.

Actually you can transform that bougainvillea which has virtually developed a woody trunk into something of great value. You can do what Noel Aton of Davao City has been doing to over-aged bougainvilleas. Noel is in the landscaping business and he has transformed a number of old bougainvilleas into high-value beauties that can be used in big landscaping projects or as an attention-getter in the home.

What has he been doing? He balls the old bougainvillea, trims it to his desired height, and plants it in a big container. After establishing the plant and after it has developed several branches to form a crown, he grafts onto the branches his desired variety.

One example is an old bougainvillea onto which he grafted a red variety from Bangkok, Thailand. He displayed the same in his stall at the recent Kadayawan Agri Trade Fair in Davao City which had attracted not a few visitors. He was selling it at P25,000.

Noel has an even bigger specimen onto which he grafted a pure white variety. And how much was he selling? A cool P100,000!

Noel and his wife Bebet are among the busiest landscapers in Davao City today. Among other projects, they have been maintaining the landscaping of SM Mall in Ecoland, Davao City and SM Mall in Gensan for about nine years now.

WONDERS OF GRAFTING

By the way, grafting has been an old technique used in propagating fruit trees with the desired characteristics. Stems of desirable mother trees are grafted onto rootstocks of the same species. This makes sure that the resulting planting material will bear fruit of the same quality as that of the mother tree. Among fruit trees that are widely propagated by means of grafting are mango, chico, lanzones, durian, rambutan, guava, balimbing, pomelo and other citrus, bignay, and many others.

In flowering ornamentals, grafting is also resorted to produce unique plants that sport different colors of flowers. These include bougainvillea, Adenium or the one wrongly called Bangkok kalachuchi, hibiscus, Mussaenda, and others.