When the trees first arrived,their trunks and branches were badly damaged because of the long travel. With proper care, the trunks have recovered well and spread their wide green canopy.
To acclimatize the trees to their new environment, Chung and other workers buried their roots deep in the ground, watered them twice a day and sprayed them with plant nutrients. In the dry season he visits the nursery from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. every day to water them. On rainy days this work is reduced but there are pests.
He said cheerfully: “Rain or sun, every day I spend time looking closely at each tree to check for signs of pests. Last April the first batch of flowers was stunning.”
According to Nguyen Thanh Tam, an engineer in the Phu My Hung City Center, the nursery has around 400 Singapore sakura trees delivered by growers in Sa Dec in the southern Dong Thap Province.
Unlike other trees, this species takes up six months for its roots to acclimatize with the soil and start a normal development. So instead of waiting for the Sakura Park construction to finish, Phu My Hung decided to buy three- or four-year-old trees to nurse them directly. The trees have been in the nursery for nearly two years. It took more than a month just to transport and gather all the trees that this project needs.
Tam, who has been in charge of Phu My Hung’s greenery for more than two decades, highly values rare plants like Singapore sakura.
On receiving instructions from the company to ensure the best quality of the plants, he began to scour for information online and ask experienced gardeners in the west about farming techniques.
But 10-15 percent of the first batch of Singapore sakura died because they could not survive the climate-soil change and the transportation.
As he researched the reasons for it, he found a way to change the mixture of the substrate and better check the moisture content and alkalinity in the soil. This proved fruitful and the trees started to grow new branches within six months. It is expected that by the end of this year some of these first trees will be planted in the first phase of Sakura Park.
“The trees have adapted and can flower in the next dry season,” Tam said.
“When planted, the trees will grow quickly and blossom in the following years.”
The tree is native to South America and has been grown in HCMC since 2009 on Dien Bien Phu, Vo Thi Sau and Vo Van Kiet streets. It grows to an average height of 15m and its trunk is 30-50cm across. The flowers are bell-shaped and pink or light purple.
The unique feature of this tree is that when it flowers most of the leaves fall off, leaving only a cluster of purple flowers on each branch.
Young people call this the cherry flower version of Vietnam.
