Sirao Garden

This guide to Sirao Garden in Busay, above Cebu City, follows flight attendant Elena Sy-Chua, who spent her layovers slipping flower seeds and cuttings into her suitcase and meant this steep hillside plot only as a quiet family retreat. It traces how the caretakers she left behind planted celosia to sell for All Souls Day, how a photo of the blooms went viral around 2015, and the choice Elena made once strangers started climbing the hill to look rather than buy. A windmill she raised here was inspired by fields she once flew over in Holland, which is why locals nicknamed the hillside Little Amsterdam.