Characteristic: The area of Tay
Ho, Quang Ba, Ngoc Ha, Huu Tiep, Dai Yen were the flower-growing land.
Overtime, Hanoi has come into its times of modernization and
industrialization. The traditional surrounding flower villages have been
turning into "villages within the city".
Referring to the traditional flower villages in Hanoi, people speak the most
of Ngoc Ha. It had become a flower village since the establishment of
capital city. This village has developed continuously by the experience of
history and time, and has always been considered as a big flower village
supplying fresh flowers for Thang Long - Hanoi City and its vicinity. In
1954, there were in this village up to 500 households involved in planting
flowers. Every morning, from the early time, the Ngoc Ha flower market was
full of buyers and sellers, even coming from Vong Village (Dich Vong - Cau
Giay District) with their tuberoses.
Due to the expansion of city and fast growth of population, the traditional
flower villages like Ngoc Ha, Huu Tiep... are getting limited, the
flowers-growing area remains only in small gardens between the buildings.
Meanwhile, many new flower villages around the capital have been gradually
set up and developing, such as Tay Tuu (Tu Liem District), Vinh Tuy (Thanh
Tri District), Dong Anh township and Phu Thuong (Tay Ho District). The
flower-growing area increases fast from 92ha in 1990 to over 500ha in 1999;
specifically, increased by 22 times in Tu Liem District, 1.5 times in Thanh
Tri District and 33 times in Dong Anh District. Among the rural districts,
Tu Liem gets the highest income from flower planting compared to the other
places in Hanoi (VND141 million per hectare in 1997).
Dam Village is the old name of Tay Tuu Commune (Tu Liem District); it is
located 15km from the Hanoi center to the west. The village changed from
rice cultivation into flower production since 1994. Presently, the
flower-growing area of Dam Village comprises up to 100ha, accounting for 35
percent of its total sown area; and there are more than 1,000 households of
the village, i.e. accounting for 40 percent of the total, are engaged in
planting flowers. The local flower planters remember that they faced
not-small difficulties when they started to change from rice into flowers,
especially in terms of seeds. Beside the varieties of seasonal flowers, so
familiar to the population of Hanoi like rose, yellow and white
chrysanthemums, peony, violet ... they have tried to import many kinds of
stranger flowers, such as queen, prince and princess chrysanthemums,
marigold, Dalat rose, French rose,...
If there are more varieties of chrysanthemums in Dam Village, then there is
a larger area devoted to growing roses in Vinh Tuy. The Vinh Tuy Village has
an area of 100 mau (1 mau = 3,600m²) reserved for planting
flowers, of which up to 55 mau for roses. Roses are grown everywhere,
in gardens and on fields. For this purpose, each household has at least tens
square meters or a whole plot. In the recent time, the local rose planters
have mainly worked with varieties of Dalat roses; but now there are more
than tens of new varieties coming with tourists to Vietnam.
The quality of flowers grown in villages around Hanoi is getting higher. A
short time ago, flowers sold in Hanoi shops were mainly provided from Dalat
and foreign countries; but now the shopkeepers also try to take flowers
right in Hanoi.
It is clear that the demand on fresh flowers in Hanoi is more and more high.
It is just the setting-up and development of new flower villages surrounding
the city that helps meet partly this demand. However, the planters have to
try to create new varieties of nice and unique flowers along with the
familiar varieties like chrysanthemums and roses.
Source: Vietnam Administration of Tourism