A Vietnamese woman living in Grabow, Germany has renovated an arid land into a garden of roses in her house. The rose garden has become a popular spot for Vietnamese people in Germany who come to enjoy the fragrance and take photos.

Mai Hoa sits in the rose garden that she spends lots of time and efforts to take care. Photo VnExpress

Mai Hoa, a 49-year-old woman hailing from Hanoi, loves roses. Her name in English also means flowers. Hoa has been dreaming for a house with full of roses when she saw a lot of roses planted in front of houses in Germany.

Four years ago when she moved to settle down in Grabow, a town in northeastern Germany, Hoa decided to turn her dream into reality. Her house in Grabow has a total area of 1,000sq.m. One third of the area can be used to grow flowers.

However, the land at first was rocky because it used to be a dump for construction materials and a parking area.Cleaning the area to plant flowers was such a big challenge for a woman who had not gardened before like Hoa. The spirited gardener started with digging 70-80m-deep holes, removed all sand and rocks and fill the holes with soils to plant trees.

An empty land with full of rocks and sand has been renovated into a rose garden. Photo VnExpress

Gardening usually took her half a day. Returning from work at 6pm, after having dinner, Hoa started gardening at 8pm and did not finish until 11pm.

“On the first days I bought any variety of rose that I saw without knowing its name, characteristics and how to take care of it. I thought the roses would grow if I gave them much water,” she told VnExpress.

But everything did not happen like what she thought. Many of the roses she planted grew slowly, even died. Hoa started to learn more about gardening on online groups. Before planting a new tree, she mixed cow manure and vegetable waste with the soil to create nutrients and moisture for the plants. From April to September which is the flower blooming season, she puts an egg or shredded banana skin or eggshells into the soils.

A chair and a table are put in the garden so that Hoa's family can relax in their free time. Photo VnExpress

Hundreds of roses bloom in Hoa's garden. Photo VnExpress

Before the tree hibernates in October and sprouts again in March next year, she outs an organic fertilizer made from buffalo horn and fish bones to add calcium and potassium to the plant.

“To make the roses to bloom beautifully, it is not easy. You have to trim the branches at the right time before and after the tree hibernates. Watering should not be too much because too much water will make the trees cold and cause a lot of fungal diseases," said Hoa.

On rainy days when the fungus like eating young leaves and sprouts, she trims old leaves, rotten leaves to make the plant not to absorb water. If the leaves have a lot of fungus, she makes her own medicine from fresh milk, vinegar, and dishwashing liquid with a certain ratio and then sprays the mixture to the plants.

Now Hoa has more than 50 varieties of roses in her garden. Some kinds of climbing roses are eye-catching and planted on homemade iron fences. There are other beautiful varieties such as Rosarium Uetersen, Augusta Luise bush or Scarlet Red Flame.

A kind of climbing roses. Photo VnExpress

Yellow roses are eye catching and outstanding among pink and red roses. Photo VnExpress

Photo VnExpress

Hoa said “Growing flowers is an elegant hobby, but the gardeners have to be patient and spend lots of efforts to succeed.”

In the first three years of gardening, she said she had to use her own hands to remove sand and rocks and carried hundreds of 10-20kg soil packages to renovate the garden. In Germany, roses bloom most beautifully from June to August because of warm weather.

Hoa spends at least two hours a day watering roses and the whole weekend trimming the plants. Her husband sometimes joked that she loves roses more than him!

Photo VnExpress

Photo VnExpress

Hoa enjoys life by visiting the garden every day to smell the flowery fragrance. She often presents the roses to her relatives. A lot of Vietnamese people living in Germany visit her garden and take photos with beautiful roses.

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Rosemary Nguyen