When my late father Tony Mercado was developing the Forest Club from raw land in 1992, I could not quite appreciate what he was doing. I did not know why he spent so much money planting trees that did not bear fruit. While most people I knew who wanted a weekend farm house developed fruit tree orchards, my father focused on planting indigenous forest tree species, explaining that he wanted to re-create the forest of his youth. I thought that it was simply expensive landscaping.