Flower village with exquisite blooms

VietNamNet Bridge - Van Thanh is one of the six flower villages in the Central Highland tourist resort city of Da Lat. The application of technological advances to farming has helped farmers keep flowers in bloom during festive occasions such as Valentine’s Day and International Women’s Day.

We arrived in the highland city on a sunny and dry day. Along the asphalted road winding around the sloppy hill to Van Thanh village are semi-detached houses and a smattering of luxury villas built in the middle of flowerbeds of roses.

We dropped in at house No75A where a truck was loaded with fresh flowers.

“We pick up and transport flowers from gardens to homes where we sort out small ones for local sales and big ones for sales in neighbouring localities such as Qui Nhon, Tuy Hoa and Nha Trang,” said house owner Nguyen Thi Tuyet. “To prepare for International Women’s Day (March 8), we have planned in advance to meet customer demand. Over the past few days, we have cancelled lots of orders because we do not have adequate flowers for supply.”

Next to the Tuyet’s is Trung Dung florist wholesale agent. We noticed that wholesaler Nguyen Thi Bich Dung was busy answering phone calls from dealers. She said tens of thousands of roses are transported from her agent to localities across the country at high prices on big celebrations such as Valentine Day (February 14) and International Women’s Day (March 8).

“Dealers from Hanoi often place orders and come here earlier than those from Saigon and Nha Trang city,” said Dung. “They select all the varieties such as carnations, Bibis, Salems and roses of different colours. When the celebration draws near, prices vary day by day…… All the villagers here grow roses, but there are only three or four wholesalers like me.”

It is said that the village used to grow vegetables only. In the late 1950s, several farmers brought home and planted some varieties of roses on a trial basis. Surprisingly this species of flower rapidly adapted to the climate and soil conditions in the Central Highlands, and since then local farmers have shifted to planting roses. Time flies and they have crossbred new varieties, using advanced technology from the Netherlands, Taiwan and Japan. Currently, more than 150ha of flowers, with two thirds dedicated to roses, are grown in the greenhouse equipped with automatic lighting and watering systems.

Flower farming has been handed down from generation to generation. Young farmers are now aware of the importance of maintaining and developing this practice.

“Our family has developed this rose garden for seven years and we have gained experience year by year. This farming practice requires perseverance,” said Nguyen Van Chinh, another farmer in Van Thanh village. “Rose prices have kept increasing since the traditional lunar New Year (Tet) festival. As far as I know, Hanoi will be running short of roses because of the cold weather this year. Therefore I have been trying to meet large orders of roses for Valentine’s Day (February 14) and International Women’s Day (March 8).”

Chairman of the Ward No5 Farmers Association Nguyen Duc Hoc told us, “In many places it will be a success story if farmers earn VND50 million/ha. Here in Van Thanh, many farmers get between VND300-500 million/ha or even VND700-800 million/ha. Many of them have built villas and bought cars.”

According to Mr Hoa, planting roses by applying high technology in Van Thanh is the most efficient business model in Da Lat. Advanced technology can help flowers bloom on the right day and be kept longer. Therefore, flower prices there are higher than in other places.

Women hold half the sky. Besides gifts from their men, flowers are indispensable to them on International Women’s Day. Farmers in Van Thanh flower village are very proud because their flowers are a spiritually invaluable gift to women on March 8.

In the garden

Rosa Steppanova


SOME gardening dilemmas solve themselves as the seasons change while others become bigger and bigger headaches as time passes.

Aralia cashmeriana is one of those larger than life herbaceous perennials that are, because of their magnificent proportions, often classed as shrubs. It has huge fingered leaves on stout stalks that, from a slow start at the end of April, rapidly grow into a perfect green dome, decked by white lace-cap flowers in the autumn.

Not long after that the whole thing collapses into a large grey sprawl. The leaves disintegrate while the stems, held together by bundles of strong parallel fibres, hang around forever ­ - if one lets them.

While the plant is in full leaf all vegetation beneath it is killed off by a lack of light, which leaves a sizeable patch of bare soil for near on five months every year. When planting it next to an old lamb house, where it towers impressively all summer, I hadn't taken this into account.


Lonicera pileata, the Chinese shrubby honeysuckle, Hedera helix 'Hibernica', a vigorous, dark-leaved ivy, even the handsome but dreadfully invasive Lamium galeobdolon, all featured, at one time or another, on my list of suitably shade-tolerant carpeters, and all were dismissed as unsuitable. The former, growing in dense shade, would look like a plucked chicken at the end of the growing season, while the other two are far too invasive for the space available.

But that bare spot wouldn't let me rest, and during the brief fine spell last month I gathered up several trays of mini daffs and a deep purple cultivar of Crocus tommasinianus to plant around the aralia's root stock. It was no use. The yellow and purple against brown soil made my stomach lurch and the bulbs sat there, in their trays, until Mothers' Day.

And here, dear reader, you are about to become party to a shameful secret. For the past five or six years I have been a member of the SSSTC or Shetland Seasonal Shrinking Trouser Club, to give it its full name. It is shameful because these days none of us with a single ounce of self-respect or self-discipline are allowed to let our trousers shrink ­ - even just a little.

As March came in like the proverbial lion last Saturday, it witnessed Lea Gardens' return to form after a long winter break. The effort (many hands make light work) continued the following day and we literally managed to move, if not mountains, then the next best thing: two impressive lengths of greenheart, one of the heaviest and hardest woods on the planet, culled from the Guyanan Chlorocardium tree. Originally used as part of a pier, then rescued from death by landfill, they are now destined to hold back the soil in a terraced bank.

There was just one problem: how to get them from one side of the garden to the other. Half an hour later, and with the help of four human beings, two lengths of rope, one wheelbarrow, and one sack trolley, they were positioned precisely where I wanted them. And that was only the start. It never ceases to amaze me what can be achieved in a day or two with a few extra shoulders to the wheel.

Roses were pruned, plantings enlarged, mature shrubs moved, willows coppiced, rotting wooden structures replaced by new, rubbish gathered and bagged, horse manure spread. I could go on.

Rather than exhausting, I have always found hard physical work enjoyable and greatly energizing. But in order for it to be enjoyable, it must serve a purpose. With the best will in the world, I can't see myself running on a treadmill, I want tangible results. My labours need to bear fruit.

That first real working weekend certainly did, and also made me realise just how much exercise the gardens gives me, and how comparatively little I get during the winter. This, I'm sure, holds true for most Shetland gardeners. Physical exertion is always followed, and sometimes accompanied, by increased cerebral dexterity. Problems simply solve themselves, as one garden job leads to another.

March is usually classed as too early for pruning roses but who cares when the sun shines and the sky is blue, even if this day between weathers is followed by a blizzard or two?

Rosa 'Bourbon Queen' is a martyr to black spot and has already enjoyed one stay of execution. A hard pruning, followed by a thick mulch above her roots did the trick for two or three years but now the disease has come back with a vengeance. The queen, a shrub rose rather than a climber or rambler, is a formidable creature that has reached out, from her well over two metres high byre wall, onto the roof and into the hayloft.

With plants taking such a long time to grow to a reasonable size, it always strikes me as such a shame to cut them back really hard, but in this case it is a final chance. If we get a reasonable summer, there might even be the chance of a few late flowers, large, heavy, pink, and sweetly scented

At the base of the rose a few single snowdrop bulbs had thickened into sizeable clumps. They were in full flower but in the way of the black-spot smothering horse manure mulch.

As soon as I had lifted them they presented me with the cure for the problem mentioned above. From now on I'll turn a blind eye to the bald patch in question, then, from January onwards I shall enjoy it as the snowdrops expand and start to cover all bare soil. I might even add some of those purple crocuses for good measure.

If you're a member of the SSSTC, don't let it get you down. We all need a little additional girth to keep us warm during the winter. As spring approaches and you spend more and more time pottering about in your garden you'll find, just as I have done, that your shrunk trousers start to magically expand once more.

* The black and white cat we'd taken to be Mr. Gentleman turned out to be a much older animal, wearing a somewhat moth-eaten coat. Despite his advanced years he looked regal, was well fed and well groomed but had obviously fallen on hard times.

By now we were surrounded by several dozen cats, all politely begging ­ - Italian cats are very well behaved ­ - for a morsel of Parma ham. But there's no such thing as a free snack, even for street-wise felines.

James pulled a photograph from the breast pocket of his trench coat and, showing the portrait of Mr. Gentleman to the assembled cats, asked if they had seen him. All but one shook their heads. A young ginger female with a tail like an apricot feather boa said she'd not long arrived from the Grosetto cat community, and recalled seeing a cat rather like him. We gave everybody a sliver of ham, whished them all a happy new year ( bon anno), and good luck (tante augurie), then headed into the night, south, towards Grosetto.

Our hopes were dashed as soon as we arrived shortly after midnight. Amongst the gatti randagi of the province was none that even remotely resembled Mr. G but, pinned just below the cat community board was a drawing of somebody who looked strangely familiar. The cruel curl of those thin lips, the small and sharply pointed teeth were unmistakable. Underneath the hastily sketched but accurate portrait of High Maintenance Husband the following warning had been scratched in strong, bold claw marks: "Beware this human, he is a prominent member of an international cat-to-fur-rugs ring. Never accept food offered by him."

And here, dear reader, on this very cliff, we have to leave the story hanging for the time being.

Buckwheat, our long-flowering native

The hardy Californian delivers pink-red blooms from late summer to winter.
By Emily Green, Special to The Times
March 6, 2008
LAST summer, a chef friend stood admiring the edge of my herb garden, joking that the blaze of color from the red-flowering buckwheat planted along the border was far too pretty to harvest for pancake flour.

In truth, I had no intention of grinding up the blossoms. It seemed incredible that even the most avid Russian blini maker ever had the patience to mill and sift the tiny flowers, which truth be told are not really red, but an intense dirty pink. Crush the flowers in your fingers and the seeds are so small, you can barely see them. You'd need an acre to produce a canapé.

It took native plants man Bart O'Brien to set me straight -- once he had stopped laughing -- that cooking buckwheat comes from another genus of plants, Asian in origin, called Fagopyrum. Our native American western buckwheats come from the genus Eriogonum, pronounced "air-ee-og-oh-num," and my floating and delicate red-flowering buckwheat is a species with the oddly aristocratic name E. grande rubescens.

So much for culinary references. Yet I couldn't rip this California native from my herb garden. No plant looks better planted in the foreground of dill and fennel, which also have spiring flowers. Moreover, long after dill is done and fennel quits in late summer, showing the limits of some immigrant plants in their adopted land, the native buckwheat is still flowering.

The blooms start in midsummer, and by late February the splodge of strangely lustrous pink, visible through the watery gray light of a winter rain, will be that last cluster of buckwheat flowers, held stubbornly aloft on delicate and kookily architectural stems.

Singling out buckwheat as a Californian representative in this section otherwise devoted to competitors from other countries with similar climates is probably odd. Red-flowering buckwheat is an unlikely Miss California for every possible reason, starting with the fact that few plants are uglier as seedlings. Volunteer seedlings or specimens in 1-gallon pots from nurseries start out looking straggly and sad, like droopy cabbages that have bolted.

The plant caught the interest of Central Coast nurseryman David Fross, who began propagating it for his Native Sons nursery in Arroyo Grande, and found it to be an acquired taste sought after by landscapers and botanic gardens.

He tried to breed plants with the darkest flowers, but he found the plant's "most endearing habit" was the way it bred on its own.

Buckwheat likes sun but can take some shade. Fross recommends it for dry meadows, perennial borders, containers, banks and rock gardens. Give it a year, and the gawky seedling will have grown into a neat mound, about 18 inches across and a foot high.

Even out of flower, it makes a first-class ground cover. The leaves are a deep green with a slight aspect of a silvery wash and felted white undersides. You get all the color hit of ivy without the invasive problem or snails.

Come mid-to-late summer, just as the spring flowering plants are punking out, the sturdiness of a good green background plant gives way to a far dreamier impression as scaffold-like flower stems start rising. The stems alone are something to behold, with a cantilevered quality as if drawn by a ruler. They give the plants a funny, graceful and oddly human aspect, less like a stem out of nature and more like a Buckminster Fuller design for a stem.

Be warned. One buckwheat is never enough. As it begins to flower, casting a pink cloud over the deep green base of foliage, you'll want a field of them, a wheat plant or not.

Then the final surprise is that this is indeed a food plant -- just not for humans. It's of infinite importance to native bees and butterflies. Above all, buckwheat may be the refuge and rescuer for our pollinators. For half the year, from late summer to the darkest days of winter, these stubborn pink flowers provide forage for creatures when the rest of the garden prima donnas are waiting for the optimum moments of spring.

Buckwheat's native ranges are the Channel Islands, whose mixture of intense heat and fog equip it perfectly to survive mainland garden conditions of intense heat and irrigation. But don't over-water the plants. They don't need it. They're real Californians.