A peach blossom delivery man in Nhật Tân Village. — Photo tienphong.vn

HÀ NỘI — Peach blossom farmers in Nhật Tân, a village famous for the flowers in Hà Nội, keep in contact with people who hire their trees for Tết and collect them after the Lunar New Year so they can get to work early for the following festival.

Many workers earn money from driving around the city to collect up the trees, and plantation owners are already busy planning for next year.

Since January 30 (the sixth day of the new lunar year), the drivers have been scooting across the city to collect the peach blossom trees families hired just for the celebration.

They are mostly freelancers, and xe ôm (motorbike taxi) drivers jobs depend much on the Nhật Tân peach blossom gardens.

Peach blossoms symbolise spring in the north, so people hire or buy peach blossom trees to decorate their houses or offices during the holiday.

Before Tết, the drivers delivered the trees to customers, and then did the rounds again to collect them after, earning millions of đồng each season, Tiền Phong (Vanguard) newspaper reported.

A man named Tuấn from Vĩnh Phúc Province said he had installed a frame on his motorbike to transport the trees.

Each day he transports four to six trees back to the gardens they came from and is paid VNĐ200,000 (US$8.7) to VNĐ300,000 ($13) per trip, depending on the distance.

Another man named Thông who owns a small-branched peach blossom garden in Nhật Tân Village hooked up a rickshaw to the back of his motorbike to carry big trees back to his garden.

Nguyên from Nhật Tân Village said he could earn about VNĐ300 million ($13,000) from his 3.6ha peach blossom garden this year.

“I only collect trees from my garden which were loaned to customers before Tết; I don't take others. Each of them was rented out for VNĐ600,000 ($26) to VNĐ1million ($43.5).”

“Only 50 per cent of the ones we collect survive,” he said.

To ensure adequate supplies for the festive season, Nguyên and other farmers in the village had to buy peach blossom roots from northern mountainous provinces like Lạng Sơn and Sơn La to graft with the trees in Nhật Tân.

Each mountainous root cost VNĐ600,000 to VNĐ1million.

This year, Nguyên bought 50 to compensate for trees that did not grow.

“You do not know if the grafts will survive until April. It is such a risk,” he told Tiền Phong. — VNS