A 24-hectare orchid garden in the heart of the 'steel land' region.

Ho Chi Minh City - With a total area of ​​up to 24 hectares, this is considered one of the largest, most well-invested, and most modern orchid gardens in the country to date.

The orchid garden in Ba Song hamlet, An Nhon Tay commune, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly An Nhon Tay commune, Cu Chi district, Ho Chi Minh City) is named Huyen Thoai (Legend) - a name that evokes a glorious historical period of the "steel land" of Cu Chi. The founder of Huyen Thoai orchid garden is Ms. Dang Le Thi Thanh Huyen, a petite woman but incredibly strong-willed and determined.

Ms. Dang Le Thi Thanh Huyen, Director of Huyen Thoai Orchid Cooperative. Photo: Phuc Lap.

A destined connection with orchids

Visiting the Legend Orchid Garden, I was truly overwhelmed by its scale. Not only is it vast, but the garden is also equipped with modern facilities, including greenhouses, irrigation systems, and concrete drainage ditches stretching for thousands of meters. Hundreds of flower beds are built with bricks, raised 40cm above the ground, and perfectly aligned. The garden I visited covers a total area of ​​4 hectares, divided into plots. The walkways between the plots are paved with hexagonal bricks, and the paths between two flower beds are covered with tarpaulin. “I’ve been in tourism , serving visitors for many years, so the garden has to be clean. Even if it rains heavily and floods outside, the orchid garden doesn’t flood inside. You can wear clean clothes and walk around freely without worrying about getting dirty,” Ms. Huyen explained.

When asked about the reason why she loves orchids more than other flowers, Ms. Huyen smiled and said, "I love orchids and all kinds of flowers, but I have a special affection for them. Actually, I don't understand why. Maybe it's fate."

Huyen recounted that her family owned a large building materials store in Cu Chi town, so her parents encouraged her to study accounting to help with the business. She followed their advice. After graduating, she worked at the family store, and the next inevitable step was to start a family.

This 4-hectare orchid garden is where Ms. Huyen first started her orchid business. Photo: Phuc Lap.

"I thought things were settled, but then unexpected changes happened. My friend who lives nearby was planning to open a building materials and interior decoration store, so she often came to my shop to learn more and ask for guidance. She has about 4,000 square meters of orchids, and seeing that I often display them on my desk, she brought some orchids as gifts."

I usually buy flowers from stalls, single-colored ones that only last about three days before needing replacement. But the orchids my friend gave me last two weeks. Not to mention the orchid arrangement comes in many colors, from red, yellow, and pink to pure white, purple, and magenta... each petal, each color, has its own unique beauty. I don't know when I fell in love with orchids.

"Then I asked for some cuttings and planted 60 orchid plants behind my house. After a year, they bloomed beautifully. Looking at the flowers that I had personally nurtured and cared for, I felt overwhelmed with emotion. That was a very strong motivation for me to continue. My family has 1 hectare of garden land, but because of excavation and selling construction materials, the ground is full of uneven holes and ponds. When I told my parents about my intention to level the garden and plant orchids, they strongly objected. But by then, I was determined, so I ignored them. Then, every day, I hired people to dump 5-7 truckloads of soil, leveling the land and planting orchids as I went. After several years, the 1-hectare garden was completely covered with orchids," Ms. Huyen recalled.

The drainage system at the orchid gardens of the Huyen Thoai Orchid Cooperative is well-invested. Photo: Phuc Lap.

Because she had no knowledge of agriculture , of plants, especially orchids – a relatively difficult flower to care for – Ms. Huyen had to figure everything out on her own, like a child learning the basics. Adding to the difficulty was that back then, there were only small orchid gardens of a few acres; no one was doing it on a large, systematic scale like she does now. She learned from small gardeners, read documents and books, and even traveled to Thailand to learn more. Yet, she still frequently faced failure; the orchids were still afflicted with root rot, shoot rot, and leaf spot diseases. Seeing rows of orchids dying en masse brought tears to her eyes.

But she told herself, if others can do it, there's no reason why she can't. Thinking this way to motivate herself and not give up, she continued working and gradually learned from experience. Things improved. Now, she has enough knowledge and experience to do everything to the best of her ability, cultivating her own orchid seedlings and supplying hundreds of thousands of seedlings to the community each year.

Introducing me to the orchids in full bloom, Ms. Huyen said: “This garden only has Mokara orchids, but as you can see, on one bed there can be 4 or 5 different colors, and each color requires different care. For example, red orchids like red renred, redsun, red-leaved, red mo dang… are ‘easygoing,’ tolerant of harsh temperatures, so they require less care and are simpler to maintain. But with yellow orchids like yellow lenna, yellow lemon, yellow apricot, yellow sunset, yellow candle, yellow copper… they are delicate and fragile, so caring for them is like caring for a newborn baby; you have to know how much they need to ‘eat’ each week and what kind of fertilizer is suitable…”

The flower beds are built up to a height of 40cm. The ground between the beds is covered with clean tarpaulin. Photo: Phuc Lap.

Legendary Orchid Garden also has dozens of other orchid varieties such as purple kenyku, yellow scorpion, red scorpion, phoenix tail scorpion, purple dendrobium, white dendrobium, sun-kissed dendrobium, etc., each with different growth characteristics and requiring different care methods.

Since dedicating herself to orchid cultivation, Ms. Huyen has won the title of Outstanding Vietnamese Farmer three times, as selected by the Central Committee of the Vietnam Farmers' Association . This coming December, she will once again travel to Hanoi to attend the National Emulation Congress.

Recovering from the pandemic and becoming even more "spectacular"

After successfully cultivating 1 hectare of orchids, overcoming numerous difficulties, Ms. Huyen began to reap the rewards. The orchid garden thrived. Wanting to expand, she persuaded her parents to let her liquidate their 30-hectare, aging rubber plantation so she could invest in large-scale orchid cultivation. “My mother strongly opposed it, but I didn’t give up. The advantage was that the rubber plantation was ready for liquidation due to low productivity, and my mother was getting older and needed to retire. After persistently persuading her, she finally agreed,” Ms. Huyen recounted.

However, things weren't easy, as they had to uproot the rubber trees completely and then reclaim the land. Since her husband was a civil servant and couldn't help her, she had to handle everything herself. This was no simple task for a woman with delicate hands and feet.

Processing, preserving, and packaging orchids in preparation for export to Cambodia. Photo: Van Bau.

After clearing the land, Ms. Huyen invested billions of dong in infrastructure. “At that time, there were no high-tech agricultural models in Saigon, especially for orchids. The water-saving irrigation system and greenhouses had to be imported from abroad at much higher prices than they are now. I invested billions of dong in these things. Then I had to buy orchid seedlings from Thailand, also at a price one and a half times higher than it is now,” Ms. Huyen recounted.

With everything ready and the seedlings planted, the orchid garden owner faced another significant challenge: operational issues. "With such a large area, caring for the plants is not simple; it requires applying a scientific and systematic process. Otherwise, failure is inevitable," Ms. Huyen said.

The following years were the golden age for Huyen Thoai Orchid Garden. At that time, a single Mokara orchid stem cost between 7,000 and 10,000 VND. Every day, hundreds of thousands of orchids of various types from Huyen Thoai Orchid Garden were distributed throughout the provinces and cities. After successfully establishing the cut-flower Mokara orchid model, Ms. Huyen founded the Huyen Thoai Orchid Cooperative with 10 members, all "leading ladies" from Cu Chi. The total orchid area of ​​the cooperative reached 24 hectares, of which the Director, Dang Le Thi Thanh Huyen, owned 12 hectares, and her sister owned 6 hectares.

Ms. Huyen said that each type of orchid with a different color requires different care, even if they are on the same bed. Photo: Phuc Lap.

However, just as the Huyen Thoai Orchid Cooperative was thriving, the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Everything went back to square one: people couldn't travel, no one was buying the flowers, and the orchid gardens were neglected, leading to their decline. "At that time, seeing the orchid gardens wither, I was completely devastated, thinking I couldn't recover. Not only did I regret losing tens of billions of dong, but the heartache I felt seeing the flowers wither was indescribable," Ms. Huyen recalled thoughtfully.

In 2022, when the pandemic subsided, Ms. Huyen started investing again, restoring her orchid garden from scratch. Although it didn't cost as much as initially because the infrastructure was already in place, it still cost billions of dong.

Mr. Phuc, one of the workers who has been with Huyen Thoai orchid garden for over 10 years. Photo: Phuc Lap.

Thanks to her unwavering determination and love for flowers, Ms. Huyen gradually recovered what had been taken away by the Covid-19 pandemic. Although some costs are now one and a half times higher than before, flower prices are lower, only two-thirds of what they used to be, but everything is going very well. The flower garden is becoming more beautiful, productivity is high, and the output is stable. Every day, the cooperative cuts hundreds of thousands of stems, selling them for 4,000 to 7,000 VND per stem depending on the type. The cooperative also exports orchids to Cambodia at a price of 8,000 to 10,000 VND per stem.

The aspirations of the Vietnamese orchid industry.

Currently, the Huyen Thoai Orchid Cooperative has grown to 15 members with an area of ​​28 hectares. On average, the Huyen Thoai orchid garden welcomes about 10 groups of visitors each month, totaling around 200 people, including foreign tourists. For a long time, the farm has become a testing ground for farmers to visit and learn about orchid cultivation and care.

Here, Ms. Huyen and the cooperative members are ready to dedicate their time to supporting local people with techniques, varieties, and experience in growing and caring for orchids. The cooperative also purchases cut orchids from nurseries for processing, preservation, and sale. For groups of students visiting to learn about orchid cultivation, she will organize career guidance classes to enhance their agricultural knowledge.

This is another orchid garden belonging to Ms. Huyen; the orchid variety here is called American Flash Orchid. This orchid garden will stimulate flowering about 2.5 months before the Lunar New Year to sell during Tet. Photo: Phuc Lap.

Regarding the process of caring for and using products for orchids, Ms. Huyen said that from the beginning, she has applied a clean, sustainable care process, avoiding the use of harmful chemical products. She confided: "Flowers are like food; even though we don't eat them, they are always close to us, often placed in prominent positions, in the living room, bedroom, or on the dining table. I am a flower lover; when I was young, there was always a vase of fresh flowers in my house and room, and I replaced them when they wilted. Therefore, I couldn't appreciate the beauty of flowers if I knew they had been sprayed with chemicals for preservation or that the care process involved chemical fertilizers and pesticides."

Here, I only use organic products, vermicompost, bat guano mixed with fermented microorganisms, and some other biological preparations. The flowers are organically grown; you can tell by their color. Like organic vegetables, they can be eaten after a week, while chemically grown vegetables look shiny but spoil after just one day. The important thing is that organic farming ensures a clean environment, which is good for me and everyone else, and the soil becomes increasingly nutrient-rich.”

For a long time, the Legendary Orchid Garden has been a destination for sightseeing and learning for many organizations, groups, and tourists, including many foreign visitors. Photo: Cooperative Legendary.

Despite being well-invested and modern, the orchid gardens of the Huyen Thoai Orchid Cooperative do not have an automatic, remote-controlled irrigation system like those used in modern agricultural models. In response to my question, Ms. Huyen explained: "Experience shows that manually watering orchids allows for better control of their growth."

Beyond her courage, perseverance, and unwavering determination—key factors contributing to the success of women from this land of steel—Huyen also harbors a greater aspiration: to elevate the Vietnamese orchid industry to a higher level.

"Vietnamese orchids cannot yet compete with those from Taiwan or Thailand because the domestic orchid industry still depends on imported varieties. Therefore, to escape the situation where we buy whatever varieties they sell, while domestic orchid research schools and institutes are still not up to par, large-scale orchid growers like Huyen Thoai must invest in tissue culture labs, research to find good, disease-resistant orchid varieties, and create unique, beautiful, and long-lasting orchid varieties to have a chance to compete with them," she said.

Ms. Dang Le Thi Thanh Huyen (left) at the First Ho Chi Minh City Patriotic Emulation Congress in 2025. Photo: Provided by the subject.

For the past few years, Ms. Huyen has been producing her own orchid seedlings, no longer importing them from Thailand. This has resulted in lower investment costs and higher profits. Not only does she supply enough seedlings for the cooperative, but she also provides seedlings to other farmers in various locations when needed.

Source: https://nongnghiepmoitruong.vn/vuon-lan-24-ha-giua-vung-dat-thep-d781490.html