Landscaping with native tree species is one of Ayala Land’s approaches to embedding sustainability into our businesses. It is a direct application of Site Resilience, one of Ayala Land’s four focus areas.
Leveraging on its experiences in the past 30 years, Ayala Land has gained insights on appropriate landscape materials for our projects. We recognize the intrinsic value of nature as a resource that can be enhanced while we use it. By utilizing native plants in our landscapes, we are able to contribute to biodiversity in urban and peri-urban areas, and potentially reduce our landscaping costs in the long term. By doing so, we also look forward to increasing public awareness and appreciation to create demand for native plants and protection of Philippine biodiversity.
Since 2016, specific guidelines were rolled out to project teams’ consultants and designers, wherein targets were set to (a) achieve 60-80% share of native species in the palette, and (b) ensure species mix in the area mimics that of the original set of species (if near a high biodiversity area, for example in our tourism estate projects).
We have successfully updated the native tree inventory in 11 of our established, emerging and planning-stage estates. The study will be used to draw lessons and enhance our targets for the next period up to 2025.
