Growing bougainvillea - a hot ornamental plant, blooming too fast to stop, a Ben Tre man earns hundreds of millions in revenue

Not only that, at the 2023 Ben Tre Province Startup Project and Idea Competition, Ms. Phuong and her colleagues' "Cai Mon farm" project won the overall first prize (Project competition). Ms. Phuong shared that the project was implemented from the desire to promote sustainable economic development and bring community tourism associated with Cai Mon flower and ornamental craft village.

Born and raised in the land considered the "kingdom" of flowers and ornamental plants of Ben Tre province, annually supplying tens of millions of products to domestic and foreign markets, from a young age, Ms. Tran Thi Truc Phuong had a strong love for flowers, especially the colorful beauty of bougainvillea.

Ms. Phuong said that in the past, her family produced a variety of flowers and ornamental plants such as yellow apricot, kumquat, etc., but due to the prolonged dry weather, the quality of the products was greatly affected. In 2020, she decided to start a business specializing in growing bougainvillea after 14 years of working in a state agency.

According to Ms. Phuong, bougainvillea loves the sun and is drought-resistant, so it grows and develops very quickly, and can be sold after 6-8 months of care. Compared to many other plants, bougainvillea is very easy to care for. The most difficult part is when the seedlings are still small, requiring more care. In addition, you must time the pot change so that the plant can focus on developing its roots, the more beautiful the roots, the higher the price.

Ms. Tran Thi Truc Phuong regularly exchanges with the leaders of Cai Mon Seedling and Ornamental Flower Cooperative (Ben Tre province) to grasp and update information about plant varieties.

Ms. Phuong is growing more than 1,000 original purple bougainvillea varieties. These flower varieties are usually grafted with additional colors before being brought to market.

Visiting the bougainvillea garden, she took the opportunity to dig the soil around the flower roots. With just a few light movements, a flower root with winding, intertwined roots gradually appeared. Usually, beautiful roots are more expensive, ranging from a few hundred to a few million VND/root. At the current price, minus the initial investment in seeds, care, fertilizer, etc., bougainvillea brings stable economic profits.

Although she is a "weaker woman", Ms. Phuong is knowledgeable in every step of growing bougainvillea. She is collecting many different varieties to graft, creating a variety of colors for the flower garden, meeting the needs and preferences of customers.

According to Ms. Phuong, to have a beautiful, satisfactory pot of bougainvillea, you must go through the grafting process. The grafting method is also simple, but first you must choose a rootstock with a strange shape; the grafted shoot (grafted shoot) will be plump and sturdy, do not choose a shoot that is too young or too old, the survival rate will not be high.

In particular, the grafting process is carried out in complete shade. After each grafting eye is covered with nylon. After about half a month or more, when the tree sprouts new shoots, it is considered half successful. To be sure, leave it for another week and then remove the wrap. When the grafted eye is completely attached and has developed stably, it can be brought out into the sun for care.

Mr. Tong Huu Toan supported Ms. Tran Thi Truc Phuong in filming videos introducing paper flower products and posting them on social networking platforms to expand the consumption market.

Not only is she a real farmer in her garden, Ms. Tran Thi Truc Phuong also proactively arranges time to register to attend online and in-person training courses, workshops, and seminars with a lot of useful content.

Thanks to that, she was able to exchange, learn and accumulate more knowledge and experience from the courses and it was also an opportunity for her to introduce local products to friends in and outside the province.

Instead of just using social networks to connect and interact with friends, farmer Tran Thi Truc Phuong also considers this an effective channel to find outlets for Cai Mon paper flower products.

In addition to posting full images of bougainvillea varieties, she also posts actual videos about planting and caring for plants, customer reviews of the products, etc., and joins groups of friends in the same profession across the country via Facebook.

Thanks to her flexible approach, many of her paper flower products have found outlets, not only sold in the district and province but also exported to many provinces and cities in and outside the country. Her customers are mainly friends on her personal page, and there are also new customers when she shares on social networking sites and groups, seeing the process of growing and caring for flowers, so they feel interested and trust to buy.

In addition to starting a legitimate business to enrich herself, in January 2023, Ms. Phuong boldly established the Cai Mon Bougainvillea Club with 15 members who are bougainvillea growers from 3 communes of Vinh Hoa, Vinh Thanh and Phu Son, Cho Lach district, Ben Tre.

The club chaired by Ms. Phuong is a place to connect passions, at the same time encourage and promote the bougainvillea movement in the locality. From there, promote the spirit of solidarity, creativity, share and develop new, beautiful, unique and strange products that are suitable for market trends; improve the quality of professional care services, diversify to meet customer needs; build gardens with beautiful and unique landscapes to serve the development of farmstay tourism.

Ms. Tran Thi Truc Phuong chooses bougainvillea rootstocks.

In 2023, Ms. Phuong and her colleagues founded the "Cai Mon farm" project with the goal of combining agriculture and tourism; exploiting the rich resources and culture of Cho Lach district to promote sustainable economic development and bring community tourism associated with Cai Mon ornamental flower craft village...

Working with the "Cai Mon farm" project as a technology manager, Mr. Tong Huu Toan - Mekong Invention Back Office Limited Liability Company (specializing in software and artificial intelligence - multimedia communications) said that realizing that local farmers and neighboring areas mainly sell raw products and have seasonal income, the group developed a friendly experience combined with providing seedlings, ornamental flowers, etc.

Since developing content on social networks, Cai Mon paper flowers have become known to many people. That is the motivation for the group to continue producing better videos. However, the group determined that the most important thing is to create quality products with diverse designs to retain customers.

The expectation from the Cai Mon farm project in the coming time is to build an ecosystem connecting local products to develop "green lifestyle" experience destinations, forming a chain - network model that takes advantage of local resources and technology.

The project "Cai Mon farm" of Ms. Tran Thi Truc Phuong (second from left) and her colleagues also won the first prize in the 2023 Ben Tre Province Startup Project (documentary photo).

Passionate about the local traditional craft village, Ms. Phuong chose to work at Cai Mon Seedling and Ornamental Flower Cooperative with the desire to promote and contribute her youth and intelligence to build her homeland to become increasingly prosperous.

Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director of Cai Mon Seedling and Ornamental Flower Cooperative, Duong Van Huyen, said that Ms. Tran Thi Truc Phuong is a young cadre with well-trained expertise; an exemplary, dynamic, creative party member, always a pioneer in the economic development movement and getting rich on her homeland.

Since coming to work, Truc Phuong has promptly advised on the development of production and business plans and proposed solutions to improve the production and business efficiency of the Cooperative. At the same time, Phuong always has innovations to contribute to making Cho Lach in general and Cai Mon in particular become a unique garden destination of the Mekong Delta region with high attractiveness and competitiveness, on the basis of exploiting the available advantages of indigenous cultural resources, natural resources, and local key agricultural products.

Source: https://danviet.vn/trong-hoa-giay-cay-canh-dang-hot-no-hoa-can-cha-kip-mot-nguoi-ben-tre-doanh-thu-hang-tram-trieu-2024041613515789.htm