Tây Tựu flower village blossoms

Although the village of Tây Tự was one of the last to switch from traditional farming to cultivating flowers, following the lead of villages like Ngọc Hà and Quảng Bá, it has blossomed into being considered the flower granary of Hà Nội.

Tây Tựu has become famous for its large variety of beautiful flowers that not o­nly grace local markets but are also exported abroad, and all the households in the village have become involved in this industry.

Farmers in Tây Tựu used to specialize in traditional agriculture but this yielded a low income. In the 1990s, however, the farmers changed to growing flowering plants and spices.

These crops brought in good profits and the standard of living in the village improved markedly. The Tây Tựu villagers first planted daisies imported from Taiwan and Singapore, but now are concentrating on growing roses on a large scale. Roses currently account for 70 to 80% of all the flowers cultivated in the region.

The first stage in establishing a flower farm is to prepare the fields by marking furrows with a milling machine and growing seedlings. The second stage - the most important and difficult, as it determines whether a tree will survive or not - is grafting nodes onto the young trees after two months' growth. The grafted plants require special care for the next 20 days, after which the grafts' nylon coverings are removed to allow the grafted shoots to grow.

It takes another three months before the flowers can be harvested, during which time a lot of work such as weeding and spraying insecticide has to be done in the fields.