Since 2018, when her family moved to San Jose, California, 53-year-old Nguyen Thi Ha Giang unexpectedly discovered a new passion: gardening, especially growing roses.
Ms. Giang and her family moved to the United States in 2015. Initially, with her husband at work and her children at school, the 53-year-old woman felt lonely and sad being home alone all day.
At the end of 2018, the family moved to a new house in San Jose, surrounded by open spaces with a few fruit trees, and the idea of creating a flower garden arose in her mind.
Having dreamed of living in a house surrounded by flower gardens since childhood, Ms. Giang persuaded her husband to renovate about 200 square meters into small flower gardens.
Initially, she went to nurseries to buy a few rose varieties to plant without careful selection. As a result, her garden mainly consisted of hybrid American tea roses with large, vigorous blooms, thick stems, and sometimes even reaching the roof.
After doing some research, she planted more hybrid rose varieties such as Floribunda and Grandiflora, especially those from the breeder David Austin in England, which have smaller, more abundant blooms. The backyard and both sides of the house are now completely covered with these types of roses.
The San Jose area has a climate and soil favorable for cultivation, so the rose garden can bloom from early spring to early winter. However, due to a lack of experience, the plants are often affected by white fungus, black spot, or rust in the beginning, causing the flowers to lose their fullness and beauty, and the leaves to dry out.
After doing some research, every winter Ms. Giang trims the base of the rose bushes to about 40-50 cm from the ground to keep them healthy. Once the plants sprout a little, she starts spraying them with a homemade solution that helps the roses avoid almost all kinds of pests and diseases. "This solution is very simple, just baking soda, soap, and cooking oil. I spray it evenly throughout the garden every 10 days," she said.
Roses are a nutrient-intensive crop. Besides cow and chicken manure, which is applied once in late autumn, when the plants begin to sprout and grow in early spring, she applies a round of fertilizers specifically for roses. After that, she fertilizes with fish fertilizer once every one to two months, and also installs an automatic watering system to ensure deep water penetration while saving water.
"The secret to having a garden full of flowers that bloom simultaneously is pruning. I prune right above the five-leaf bud, not at the three-leaf bud, which helps the flowers to sprout again," Ms. Giang said.
Ms. Giang said that she spends time every day taking care of the plants, promptly detecting and preventing the outbreak of pests and diseases.
"Every time my husband returns from a business trip, he always helps me renovate the garden, doing all the heavy work like digging the soil to build a fish pond, constructing trellises, laying bricks for pathways, or trimming the climbing roses," she said.
Ms. Giang never thought that gardening and growing flowers could have such positive effects on her health.
"Before, I had absolutely no love for gardening; I only enjoyed looking at plants from afar. But since I got roses, I've become addicted to plants and gardening," she said.
To date, in addition to roses, Ms. Giang has also planted other types of flowers to make her living space more vibrant, such as lilies, chrysanthemums, lavender, tulips, and various fruit trees and vegetables.
To date, the garden has nearly 50 rose bushes covering it, but due to their love for roses, the owners continue to add several new climbing rose varieties. The garden features many famous types such as the white Iceberg shrub rose; the three-variety Eden rose (white, pink, and red); the New Dawn climbing rose; the Ebb Tide wine-purple rose; and the aristocratic Princess Alexandra of Kent rose.
Pictured is the famous Arborose Jasmina climbing rose variety from the German breeder Kordes, with its abundant clusters of small, multi-petaled flowers that are soft and velvety.
For Ms. Giang, roses are not just for admiring; they are also used as food or beauty products. Every year, when the season comes, she picks the flowers, dries them to make tea, cakes, candies, and soaks them in oil for skincare, both for personal use and as gifts for family and friends.
The garden is a spiritual remedy that brings a sense of peace. When gardening connects her with the land, plants, birds, and insects, and allows her to immerse herself in nature, she finds life lighter, reducing her need to seek happiness externally and instead turning inward to contemplate herself.
"My past life had some wounds that I didn't know how to heal. Thanks to the garden, I've been reborn. Just choose a corner of the garden, sit down, take a deep breath, and all your worries and anxieties are carried away by the wind," she said.
For the past few years, the garden has also become a place where Ms. Giang entertains friends and enjoys tea. This summer, during the peak of the flower season, the garden became the venue for a friend's wedding anniversary celebration. Friends from many places gathered there, taking photos, chatting, and eating in a space filled with the fragrance of flowers, making the celebration a memorable occasion.
"Even though everyone is getting gray hair, in that romantic setting we all feel young again," Ms. Giang shared.
Vnexpress.net
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