Sirao Garden: Selfies Paid Better

Place

Sirao Garden

Visited: May 24, 2023
Published: October 24, 2026

At Sirao Garden, in the mountains of Cebu City, two giant white hands rise out of a hedge, side by side, with a staircase between them. You climb the stairs, step out onto a palm, and have your picture taken.

Two giant white hands rising side by side above a hedge, fingers curled upward, with a narrow staircase running up between them, under a cloudy sky with hills behind — Two hands and a staircase. The rest is up to you.

I went up. There was no railing, and it was quite frightening.

Nobody was waiting to go up after me. It was just after noon, and perhaps that was why the garden was almost empty. An elderly woman passing by greeted me in Bisaya.

October 2015

In October 2015, the garden was a flower farm. Its flowers had been grown to be cut for All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, when families in the Philippines bring flowers to the graves of their dead.

Then photographs of the farm spread on Facebook and Instagram, and people started coming up to take their own. The owner told the caretaker to stop harvesting. Visitors paid to come in, and within a week, he told a reporter, the farm was making more from people taking pictures than it had from selling flowers at the market.

He also said he did not know the words “selfie” or “groufie”.

A few days later, the owner posted before-and-after photographs on Facebook. “The people didn’t care about the flowers and walked all over them,” she wrote. Some visitors had cut or pulled up flowers and taken them home. She was not angry, she said, and she admitted there had been no signs telling visitors what not to do.

Little Amsterdam

Online, Sirao was already being called a mini Amsterdam. The owner, a former international flight attendant who had the tulip gardens of Holland in mind, settled on Little Amsterdam, and a windmill went up.

A weathered white statue of a woman holding a garland beside a large yellow ring shaped like a flower, through which a brick windmill, a bed of pink flowers, a heart-shaped SIRAO GARDEN sign and mountains can be seen — A lady, a windmill, and a flower big enough to look through.

Elsewhere in the garden wait a white carriage and a golden couple, for anyone who would like their photographs a little more European.

An ornate white wrought-iron carriage with a crown-shaped top and large spoked wheels, beside a white figure of a child holding up a planter, with painted house fronts, palm trees and hills behind — Photo spots for the romantically inclined.

A gold-painted statue of a man and a woman sitting close together on a log-shaped seat in front of a hedge, her head resting on his shoulder, with pink flowers and sunflowers beyond — Photo spots for the romantically inclined.

The flowers had a Dutch link of their own. The celosia grown in Sirao is said to have come from seedlings brought back by a group from Cebu who visited Haarlemmermeer, in the Netherlands, in 1991.

What grows now

A hillside garden with white railings along stepped paths, flowerbeds, a gazebo with a dark roof decorated with hearts, colourful stacked figures, a white lion statue and two giant white hands in the distance, with green mountains behind — White railings, all the way down the hill.

In 2021, the owner said they had stopped planting celosia. After years of replanting, the colours had faded, and the soil was no longer good for it. In its place came pink queen, sage and other plants “commonly found in Europe”.

Two years later, I did not see a field of red and yellow. The brightest yellow I photographed was not a flower at all. It was fruit: probably Solanum mammosum, a nightshade known in Japan as “fox face”.

Horned yellow and orange fruits hanging on thin branches above a small, worn white figure of a child with one arm raised, sitting on a stone ledge among green plants — Fox face, probably, above a small white figure with one arm raised.

Among the flowerbeds, in a thatched hut, stood the Nativity: Mary, figures bearing gifts, an ox and a donkey. At either end stood Santa Claus. Two of him. It was late May.

Figures from a Nativity scene under a thatched roof, including a kneeling woman in a white veil, bearded men holding gifts, an ox and a donkey, with a Santa Claus figure in a pink suit at each end — The ox and the donkey seem to have accepted it.

Elsewhere live frogs, a telephone and a toilet.

A white toilet used as a planter, its seat raised and the bowl filled with a cactus and trailing leafy plants with small red flowers, with more plants growing from the tank, set in grass against a blue wall — Residents who never need watering. One of them is holding plants anyway.

A group of green frog figures on a concrete floor, the largest grinning with its chin in its hands, surrounded by smaller frogs in different poses, with an orange flamingo figure and a green Christmas-tree ornament nearby — Residents who never need watering. One of them is holding plants anyway.

Nobody else was using any of it.

The inside of a vehicle-shaped space with a steering wheel, wooden benches along both sides, a rusty frame and window openings, and grass growing on the floor — Nobody at the wheel.

Two orange wheelbarrows marked THOR lying on their sides on the grass beside a dirt path, among leafy plants and white flowers — THOR, off duty.

On the palm

The view from the palm of one of the giant white hands, its surface scuffed and stained, with a row of tall white fingers rising ahead against storm clouds and green hills — From on top: fingers, clouds and the mountains.

From the top of the hands, you look out past the fingers to the mountains. The palms were scuffed and stained.

These, at least, you are allowed to walk all over.

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Location

Sirao Garden

In the mountain barangay of Sirao, Cebu City. Not to be confused with the nearby Sirao Pictorial Garden and Camping Site, a separate garden.

Sirao, Cebu City, Cebu, Philippines

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Practical Information

Visiting: A hillside garden with steps and photo spots. When I visited in 2023, the giant hands had no railing at the top; take care if you climb them.

Information last checked: October 24, 2026 (Location checked on Google Maps. Opening hours and admission are not stated.)

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