Nestled in the heart of Hanoi, a hi-tech orchid garden stands as a testament to the Vietnamese capital city’s growing agricultural innovation. 

Spanning 150,000 square meters, the greenhouse is home to a sprawling forest of Phalaenopsis orchids. 

The state-of-the-art facility features a round-the-clock industrial air conditioning system, purified water through reverse osmosis (RO) technology, and seaweed imported from Chile and South America.

Taiwanese businessmen, who come from the global hub of orchid cultivation, were in awe when they visited this garden as its scale and advanced technology surpass many renowned orchid farms of Taiwan and Asia. 

The garden currently houses around two million Phalaenopsis plants with 130 colors. The number of plants is set to expand to eight million in 2025. 

Some areas of the garden are cultivating orchids for the 2027 and 2028 Lunar New Year holidays.

Meticulous care for orchids

Thousands of neatly lined orchid plants are developing at the hi-tech garden run by Global Investment Development High Technology JSC, located in Dan Phuong District. 

The first blooms of Phalaenopsis orchids begin to appear at the end of lunar November, marking the beginning of an orchid season when traders flock to the garden to pick up thousands of orchid plants for consumption across Vietnam.

The orchid cultivation process requires intense care, from regulating temperature and humidity to watering, fertilizing, light management, and pest control.

Over 100 farmers work at the garden daily.

As an engineer who learned about orchid farming techniques in Taiwan, Le Minh Tuan explained that it is not difficult to select a pot of orchid that will bloom beautifully for Tet, or the Lunar New Year now two weeks away, but the real challenge lies in timing the flowers’ bloom to the exact day.

An orchid plant typically has 10-30 blooms. Depending on the variety and health of the plant, each orchid requires a specific process, ensuring that the first bud appears within 140-170 days.

Whether in freezing cold or under the harshest sunlight, the temperature in the greenhouse must be kept stable 24 hours a day thanks to an air conditioning system, while light intensity is carefully regulated to encourage healthy growth.

“During the blooming stage, it is essential to water and fertilize the orchids properly,” said Tuan.

Nguyen Suong Mai, head of technical operations at the garden, shared that each orchid goes through four or five times of being repotted to allow the plant to grow in larger pots, with each new pot containing more seaweed-based fertilizer. 

The use of RO-filtered water and temperature control ensures the orchids thrive in a controlled environment. 

If the power goes out, backup systems immediately kick in to ensure uninterrupted operations.

“With such modern techniques, we can easily control the exact number of flowers and the color of orchids, meeting market demand,” Mai said.

Desire to export orchid seedlings

Vietnam, with its favorable climate, is a large market for orchids, but it has still relied entirely on seedlings imported from Taiwan and mainland China. 

In a bid to change this reliance, Nguyen Van Kinh, chairman of Global Investment Development High Technology JSC, set out with a clear goal. He wished to master the technology of orchid cultivation. 

After multiple failures and millions of U.S. dollars in losses for mistakes, his company finally succeeded in cultivating its own seedlings.

“Despite many failures, I remained determined and invested all my assets to make orchids my life’s work,” Kinh recounted.

He poured US$4 million into acquiring advanced seedling propagation technology from Taiwan.

The company also spent hundreds of billions of Vietnamese dong building laboratories and a greenhouse that meets international standards, and importing a variety of advanced machines such as air conditioning systems, positive pressure systems, air filtration systems, and artificial lighting.

The company’s garden produces millions of orchid seedlings every year. These seedlings are not only used for the company’s own operations, but also provided to local farmers and cooperatives.

Last year, Kinh began putting on sale Phalaenopsis orchid seedlings, helping to reduce Vietnam’s reliance on imported orchid varieties.

With a production capacity of 10 million seedlings per year, the company aims to account for 30 percent of Vietnam’s total orchid seedlings, with a future goal of exporting seedlings globally.

To achieve its export goal, the company spent tens of millions of dollars acquiring a 40-percent stake in a flower production company in Taiwan, while also inviting five top professors from Taiwan to Vietnam to establish an international-class laboratory dedicated to researching pesticides for orchids.

“To make Vietnam a global destination for orchid buyers, we must cultivate native orchid varieties, starting with those from Truong Son Mountain Range, which is home to a wide array of native orchids, and create flowers that can adapt to new growing conditions,” Kinh said.

Vietnam boasts fast-growing flower market

The global market annually consumes about 800 million plants of Phalaenopsis orchids valued at around $10 billion, Kinh noted.

Vietnam is one of the top orchid consumers, its rapid growth rate at 70-100 percent each year. 

The Vietnamese market consumes some 12-15 million plants each Tet. 

Kinh expected his company to generate up to VND30 billion ($1.2 million) per hectare annually from orchid sales.

Apart from investing in orchid cultivation, Kinh also cooperated with international architects to design the farm space like a five-star resort and open conference areas and exhibition zones to showcase orchids to international visitors.

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