How a Filipino father is using gardening practices and traditional ecological knowledge to cultivate a sense of home in arid Southern California.
Chickens squawk in the shade of a banana tree. Calamansi hang heavy on their branches and the scent of oregano wafts about the air as a Filipino man bends over the ground, examining bitter melon leaves. Outside, it’s the edge of the Mojave, dry and uninviting; but here, in this backyard, Pangasinan is alive and breathing.
Immigration can be one of the most challenging events of a person’s life. Facing a mixture of lifestyle changes, cultural differences, and isolation, many immigrants experience alienation both from their original and newfound communities. Yet, by embracing the land around him, Jason Soriano has found a way to retain his cultural identity and farming roots in the dry, uninviting soil of Rancho Cucamonga.
What did it take to build a sense of home here, so far from the Philippines? What does it mean to re-member a space and community in such a different natural and social environment?
To answer these questions, we need to travel back. Jason grew up on a farm in Pangasinan, a northwestern province in the Philippines, helping his grandparents by tending to their animals and planting crops like corn, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. Throughout his childhood, all the routines of animal and plant care were opportunities for joy and interest. Now, at almost 50 years old, he still remembers the work fondly. “You could always walk around and see what was happening on the farm,” Jason says. Having grown up in such a vibrant environment, interacting with the life surrounding him was the most exciting, easy thing he could ever want to do. “I used to go and sit with the animals a lot… pigs, goats, chickens, ducks–sometimes, I’d dine with them right there.”
That said, there was also the excitement and appreciation of things that went uncultivated. “The nature over there was something else,” he remembers fondly. “The ecosystem in the Philippines had a way of cleaning itself. You didn’t have to worry about pesticides because there were always a lot of animals in the area–birds and insects–that would keep the pests away.” He says that concept of self-regulation inspired him to be an observer in nature early on. “In Pangasinan, nature never felt like something to control.” Instead of seeking control, Jason and his family simply acted within the natural world and trusted its processes.
Cut to Jason now, in his perfectly rectangular backyard. He lives in the bustling suburb of Rancho Cucamonga, on the tail end of the Mojave desert; more specifically, he lives on Haven Avenue–one of Rancho’s busiest streets, lined with identical houses and sprinkled with popular businesses. The walls of his backyard separate his home from a neighbor on one side and the city’s water treatment facility on the other. Like the cookie-cutter nature of the buildings, a couple of things are sure: there is no question that noise, light, and air pollution will be notable daily.
Jason had no idea that this would be his reality when he immigrated to the United States; yet, like many other specialized workers in the Philippines, he was basically required to find a job outside of the country. “It’s really common for kids in the Philippines to be raised by their grandparents,” said his wife, Ellen. “Parents working in other countries make more money than they ever would back home, and they send a lot of it back to their families. People at home call them OFWs–Overseas Filipino Workers–because so many bright people end up moving to other, richer countries instead of building up businesses at home. It’s sad, but that’s how it was going to be for us. Jason and I met while working as engineers abroad in Tokyo, then moved back to the Philippines to start a family. Once we were back, though, I applied for a job in the US on a whim, and I unexpectedly got called out to California. It was so hard to be away from my family. Jason and our daughter ended up coming out soon after and, now, we’ve been working in the US for almost twenty years.”
“At the start, being here was really hard,” Jason chuckled. “I spoke English with a strong accent, and we moved into an apartment. I wished we had more space, but there were other things we needed more–like green cards.”
That’s why, when they finally became established and bought their home a few years later, Jason’s first priority was setting up a garden. Now, years later, the space is a sort of sanctuary. Where the proportions of the city’s infrastructure and the certainty of pollution are decided, the shapes of his backyard are free and loose. A banana tree hangs huge and untrimmed in the corner, giving shade to boisterous grass and unruly ferns beneath. Despite all the differences of the city, this plot of land is comfortingly familiar. “My garden isn’t set up the American way, all nice and organized,” said Jason. “I like it overgrown. It makes me feel at home.”
Jason still recalls the various lessons he learned from his grandmother on the farm about herbs, fruits, and vegetables that could change his life–now, he’s gotten the chance to plant many of them for himself. “I don’t have room for corn back here,” Jason laughed. “But, over there, I planted bitter melon because it keeps bugs away from the rest of the vegetables. Plus, they say it helps to regulate your blood.”
Each plant in the yard has a purpose and history that extends far past their presence here: they harken back to traditional ecosystems of the Philippines. Their presence in Rancho Cucamonga is especially surprising because the soil in which Jason plants isn’t the natural, desert soil of the land. “It’s a lot harder to grow things, and some things don’t grow at all,” he noted, matter-of-factly. “You have to oxidize and cultivate the soil. You have to mix it with a lot of different things because we aren’t planting in the real ground–they just dumped all this in. They built this neighborhood over a water reservoir… just filled the place in with rocks and dirt.”
Beyond creating a familiar space, Jason says that one of his main reasons for gardening is to teach his kids the benefits of interacting with the land. He raised both his children in Rancho Cucamonga, visiting the Philippines every year or two to make sure they got to see the space and family that make up their extended community. “I can’t imagine raising my kids without them knowing how life is in the Philippines,” he stated. Jason notices that they have grown up in a way deeply different from him; yet, he’s confident that he has shown them the importance of a personal relationship with nature and the food they grow. “The only way to pass on that knowledge,” he says, “is on the table. Kids now have constant access to the internet, but they can’t tell how anything tastes until they have it with dinner.”
It isn’t just his kids that benefit from the backyard, though: Jason can’t imagine where he personally would be without his gardening practice. “I’ve become stronger because of my yard,” he said. “I’m not afraid of losing my job or having to learn new things anymore, because I’m self-sufficient. You have to learn to adapt. I used to be too quiet, just silently working… a lot of Filipinos come to the U.S. and just stay at their office desks. That’s not the way to do it. That makes you invisible–it makes you feel like you don’t exist. But they can’t take what you know.”
That’s the center of everything: Jason takes what he knows and, with care, creates a generative and powerful space. Through memory and ecological knowledge, he embraces the land surrounding him.
What’s more, Jason isn’t the only one in the city to embrace his small plot of land: Rancho Cucamonga is composed largely of immigrants making homes in their confined yards. Jason, himself, has had an impact in this process: recently, in light of the spreading bird flu, he has been taking extra care of his chicks and giving out eggs at his office. Ellen began counting: they give away five dozen eggs per week. “People love the eggs so much, they’ve started asking me for chickens,” he laughed. “I’ve recruited two guys already. They already started building their own coops and they’re so happy.”
Jason and Ellen’s old neighbor, another Filipino immigrant named Joseph, also had his life changed by Jason’s chickens. “Joseph has had anxiety and depression for years now. I think it was from when his dad died and his kids left for college–things happened one after the other, quickly. I didn’t realize he was struggling, but I gave him chickens because he always seemed interested in ours. He told us afterwards about everything going on in his life and how the chickens I gave him helped. Now, he looks forward to going into his yard everyday. It makes me so happy.”
“Some rich people are philanthropists–they give away money,” Ellen said. “Jason is a farmer, so he gives away chickens.
A city may be built-up of all sorts of things–unnatural soil, miles and miles of repetitive structures–but real building begins within the home. It’s what you do with what you have that makes a place special. Jason understood this long before he came to the bustling suburb of Rancho Cucamonga, and he continues to practice it today.
Whether you’re new to a place or you’ve been established for a while, remember: it means so much to connect with the land around you. Making the effort to be outside and have a relationship with nature is one of the most empowering, fulfilling actions we can take as people on this Earth. Today and tomorrow, get out there, enjoy the land, and make sure it’s being treated right. Make sure you’re treating yourself right, too. It’s exactly the message Jason wishes he could spread to everyone trying to make a home in this constantly changing world: “Sustainability is self-sufficiency.”
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Ford Melillo is a poet and writer of Cuban and Azorean descent from Southern California. They study English and Environmental Communication at Stanford, but they've also spent time writing in England and Washington state. Ford has a love for language and creating that they’ve cemented over years of storytelling, translating, and conversations with people from all walks of life.
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