Tagbilaran City, Bohol. Urban gardening, also known as city gardening, is defined as "the process of cultivating green spaces in urban settings." It comprises a number of projects, including urban farming, patio gardens, and community gardens. Individuals, clubs, businesses, and organizations can all maintain urban gardens. The amount and variety of food grown, as well as the scale of the project, might vary greatly, but all urban gardening efforts are based in a city environment.

Because produce is cultivated locally rather than on distant farms, urban gardening minimizes transportation needs, lowering carbon emissions.

Urban gardens are often small-scale ventures that use sustainable gardening principles. Sustainable and organic agriculture prevents or significantly minimizes the environmental damage caused by industrial agricultural systems.

In addition, green spaces in cities help to mitigate the urban heat island effect.

With this, the Agricultural Training Institute in Central Visayas launched its training program Glamourizing Urban Gardening Make It Attractive (GUGMA) for the Youth and Community. The participants are expected to enhance their skills and knowledge on urban gardening while appreciating the arts in agriculture.

Tagbilaran City, which serves as the capital of Bohol, is a suitable location to begin this project. This project has further prospects for economic and social growth in Tagbilaranon. Their revenue will come from the produce grown in their community gardens. The harvest festival serves as a place for experiencing group learning within the community. This increases their appreciation and love for agriculture.

At least seven (7) barangays namely: Bool, Booy, Cabawan, Manga, Mansasa, San Isidro, and Ubujan have signified to pursue and developed their community gardens.

Additionally, a contest will be implemented featuring their Edible Landscaping designs to encourage community involvement and fully apply what they have learned during the training.                                     

"I am very thankful for the ATI-7 conducting this seminar/training on GUGMA. The learnings I obtained in this seminar are the following, how to prepare us to have sustainable food in the future, in planting variety of plants in the backyard it can help us to save our daily consumption of food in short we can save money and have a good health because we are eating our own produced We do hope that ATI-7 will never stop their advocacy for training/seminar to all the people that are willing to accept to learn. Also, we hope that we will all apply all the learning that we acquired in this training”, expressed Mr. Joseph N. Inting from the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) based at Brgy. Cabawan, this city.

A total of 30 participants from across Tagbilaran City joined the activity held on April 17-19, 2024 at the ATI-RTC-7 Training Complex.