Tống Hữu Toàn helps Trần Thị Trúc Phương to make video clips introducing her bougainvillea flowers on social media platforms. VNA/VNS Photos Chương Đài

BẾN TRE — Born and raised in Vĩnh Hoà Commune in Chợ Lách District, considered the kingdom of flowers and ornamental plants of the southern province of Bến Tre, Trần Thị Trúc Phương, 44, carries within her a strong love for ornamental plants.

With passion, creativity and a desire to prosper from local resources, she decided to start her own business by growing giấy (bougainvillea) flowers at the age of 40 and achieved unexpected success.

At Bến Tre Province’s Entrepreneurship Ideas Competition in 2023, Phương's project called Cái Mơn Farm, which promotes sustainable economic development and integrates community tourism with the ornamental flower village of Cái Mơn, won the first prize.

Phương revealed that her family planted various types of flowers and ornamental plants such as apricot blossoms and kumquat trees for the Lunar New Year Festival. However, prolonged drought affected the quality of the plants significantly.

In 2020, she decided to start her own business specialising in bougainvillea flowers, after working for 14 years in a State-owned agency.

Phương said bougainvillea flowers thrive in sunlight and withstand drought well, and they grow and develop very quickly. Compared to many other crops, bougainvillea flowers are very easy to care for. After 6-8 months of care, they are ready to be sold.

“The most crucial time is when the seedlings are small and require more attention. Additionally, it is important to repot them at the right time so that the plants focus on root development,” she said.

“The better the roots, the higher the price,” she said, adding that the price ranges from several hundred to several million đồng per plant.

Phương said she is currently growing over 1,000 original purple flower seedlings, which are usually grafted with additional colours before being brought to market.

With the current prices, excluding initial investment in seeds, care and fertilisers, the flowers bring stable economic profits.

Currently, Phương is collecting various types of grafts to create a diverse range of colours in her flower garden, meeting the needs and preferences of customers.

According to Phương, to have a beautiful bougainvillea flower pot, it must go through the process of grafting. The grafting root must have a unique shape from sturdy, well-developed plant to ensure its survival and growth.

Especially, grafting steps are carried out entirely in the shade, and after grafting, each eye is wrapped in nylon. After about half a month or more, the plant will sprout new shoots.

“It can be considered half successful. To ensure success, it's necessary to leave it wrapped for another week. Once the grafts have fully adhered and grown stably, they can be taken outside to receive sunlight for care,” she said.

Phương has registered for various training courses, workshops and online seminars to accumulate more knowledge about the ornamental flowers.

To improve her knowledge about ornamental plants, Phương has scheduled her time to take various training courses, workshops and online seminars. Thanks to this, she has exchanged experiences and accumulated more knowledge from these courses, as well as had an opportunity to introduce her products to other people.

Instead of using social media simply for networking and interacting with friends, Phương sees this as an effective channel to find outlets for her flower products. Apart from posting images of various types of flowers, she also uploads practical videos about planting and caring for plants, as well as customer reviews about her products.

Thanks to her flexible approach, Phương has managed to sell her flower products in many cities and provinces. Her customers are mainly friends on her personal page, and there are new customers from the community groups where she showcased the process of planting and caring for flowers.

In January 2023, Phương boldly established the Cái Mơn Bougainvillea Flower Club with 15 members who are flower growers from Vĩnh Hòa, Vĩnh Thành and Phú Sơn communes in Chợ Lách District.

The club, led by Phương, serves as a place to encourage and promote bougainvillea flower planting in the local area, develop new flower products in line with market trends, improve the quality of professional care services to meet customer needs, and construct beautiful, unique landscape gardens to serve farmstay tourism development.

Phương and her associates founded the Cái Mơn Farm project with the goal of integrating agriculture and tourism, exploiting the rich resources and culture of Chợ Lách District to promote sustainable economic development and connect community tourism with the Cái Mơn ornamental flower village.

Dedicated to the traditional craft village of her locality, Phương chose to work at the Cái Mơn Seedling and Ornamental Flower Cooperative with the desire to contribute to make her hometown more prosperous.

Engaged with the Cái Mơn Farm project in the role of technology director, Tống Hữu Toàn from the Mekong Invention Back Office Co,Ltd stated that since developing content on social media through video clips, Cái Mơn bougainvillea flowers have become more popular. This serves as motivation for the team to produce even better videos.

However, most important is to create high-quality, diverse new models of products that capture customers' attention, he said.

Toàn said the team plans to build an ecosystem connecting local products to the development of green lifestyle destinations in Cái Mơn Farm. — VNS