There are magical places that you can visit so many times and still feel like you’re seeing them for the first time.
A trip back to Sonya’s Garden in Alfonso, Cavite helped me recall the many occasions celebrated in this healing sanctuary. My family has held birthdays, anniversaries, New Year’s celebrations in this paradise. It was even the healing place of my sister Michelle from her bout with cancer.
Yes, Sonya’s is not just a bed and breakfast with several cottages where you can bask in the comfort of nature’s luxury but it’s also a special sanctuary where healing of the heart, mind, body and soul takes place without you even noticing. It just happens ever so slowly and surely.
Sonya’s is truly magical and even mystical everywhere you look. It’s an English garden of different flowers and plants that spell charm and loveliness.
To visit Sonya’s Garden is to pamper oneself with wellness. After all, it is the advocacy of Sonya Garcia, the gracious innkeeper of Sonya’s Garden, to be a healer and not a destroyer of this planet. To begin with, at her lush gardens are eco-friendly and tastefully designed restaurants that serve food with a minimized carbon footprint, as the ingredients are also free of synthetic preservatives. Expect the salad greens and the flower petals that land on your plate to be freshly picked from Sonya’s organically grown gardens. Because it is a lifestyle and health haven, expect the fruits on your table to be pesticide-free. Paradise shuns genetically modified fruits and vegetables so Sonya herself knows better what to serve her growing clientele.
I have been fortunate enough to witness many times the goings-on at Sonya’s kitchen. The meals for the day are prepared fresh at the crack of dawn. The sizzle of onions and garlic as they mix in the pan slathered with olive oil produces a rhythm that harmonizes with the cool temperature of the place. Mass production of food is a no-no. You cannot even find a microwave anywhere at Sonya’s because it is the owner’s conviction that such an appliance is not good for the health.
The food here is never second best. From the delectable salad with greens and fruits and Sonya’s secret dressing to her Filipino breakfast (served if you spend the night.) The Filipino cuisine includes chiperones ensutinta (fresh squid sauteed in sweet olive oil), crispy adobo flakes, kesong puti cooked in flavorful butter, Spanish omelet filled with herbs from the garden. There is also an herb garden and vegetable garden where one can pick one’s own greens.
We are so blessed to have Sonya’s Garden in our country because, on my list of most beautiful places in the world, it is tops.
It was a full moon when we revisited this favorite jaunt of ours. My BFF Bum Tenorio was singing his medley of kundiman songs while I was neatly and comfortably tucked under the flowering trees writing this article.
It’s so easy to jot down your thoughts here because the place simply inspires you and makes you feel nostalgic. Here, one can feel God’s love; it’s so absolute. Your memory is heightened and it helps that you marvel at the flower- and fruit-bearing trees around and realize that these trees absorb the carbon dioxide and release oxygen to unclog your lungs. (This Christmas season, there are fire trees around Sonya’s Garden that are aglow with lights at night.)
Going down memory lane, what started in 1998 as a single room, which was actually Sonya’s home, has expanded to become a 1.5-hectare paradise with several cottages, a bakery, gift shop, spa, and a number of pavilions where weddings and large events can be hosted. (When we were at Sonya’s last weekend, a couple from France and their Filipino and Parisian friends booked the whole B&B for their wedding.)
Time spent at Sonya’s Bed and Breakfast is a be-kind-to-yourself moment. Here, you hear the innkeeper quoting one of her favorite lines: “How beautiful it is to do nothing and rest!” Truly, at Sonya’s, the art of doing nothing can be perfected. You savor the place — take your pick in any of the cottages that are uniquely furnished where you can loll, lounge, read (every room has an exquisite collection of classic and contemporary books) and be still. Perhaps you can even excavate your authentic self in silence by looking within and discover your best friend: yourself. After “doing nothing,” rest by having a relaxing massage.
The dexterous hands of masseuses at Sonya’s are healing, too. At the spa, the highly trained therapists will assuage your tired and weary muscles as though it is the very first time you have felt this way.
Within Sonya’s Garden property is the Sonya’s Lifestyle Haven, a beautiful home for friends and kindred spirits who wish to spend their days in a paradise on earth. The Lifestyle Haven has five cottages, namely Buttercup, Hollyhock, Petunia, Periwinkle, Primrose, which bear her signature touch of loving kindness and class.
Sonya’s family and friends are quick to quip that Sonya’s Garden is a reflection of her heart and soul that finds joy in giving joy to others without expecting anything in return. Here, one can feel the love through the staff members who feel and experience the generosity of Sonya as well. Sonya gratefully acknowledges the contribution of her staff in maintaining Sonya’s Garden as a paradise. So, she also looks after their welfare by elevating the status of their lives and preparing them for their retirement. She always tells her friends: “No man can become rich unless he himself has enriched the lives of others.”
“It’s all about doing my own little things to save this planet as I consider myself a caretaker and not an owner of this land. After all, aren’t we all transients? And this is my legacy, to make a significant contribution towards a toxic-free lifestyle,” Sonya says.
No wonder all these wonderful traits and more invite you to keep coming back for more love, more sumptuous food and more memories that will keep you joyful for a long, long time.
Sonya’s Garden will always be our respite, our place of comfort and joy. No matter how tired or weary we are, we will always find what we are looking for here. After all, Sonya never runs out of something new for her guests to enjoy.
It is our sanctuary of prayer and praise. Here, one feels closer to the Creator as one admires His creations in the beautiful flowers and plants so lovingly cared for by the Royal Innkeeper.
Sonya’s Garden is perhaps the paradisiacal interpretation of Joyce Kilmer’s “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. A tree that spreads its mighty bows to create trees all in a row…” In every bloom that she plants, in every sheet of crisp white linen that she lays out, in every meal that she prepares — we celebrate with her the kind of life she lives that she believes we ought to have as well.
The flowers that bloom here open during the day and others during the night. One activity we love is to smell the fragrance of the flowers as they bloom extraordinarily. There is even a flower that blooms only once every year. Sonya will take you around her flower garden and explain each and every flower that blooms here.
In the places all over the world, Sonya’s is tops among the healing sanctuaries I have visited. Who would think that right here in our land lies a place so sacred that one instantly feels so blessed the minute one steps inside this paradise? This garden is the way God wanted it to be from the beginning. No wonder it is a favorite place for very special occasions that will certainly outlast a lifetime.
No matter how many times you have visited Sonya’s Garden, it’s always like the first time. And like true love’s kiss, it will always be sweet. After all, in this paradise, you have a romance with the ordinariness of living while basking in simple abundance.
As Sonya concluded, “Now I will begin my doing-nothing ritual — linger in bed and relish my dreams. So should you.”
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E-mail me at miladay.star@gmail.com.
For information about Sonya’s Garden and Bed & Breakfast, call +63917-5335140 and +63917-5031080. Visit www.sonyasgarden.com.