The flower festival is expected to open on February 12 and finish on February 24 at the Tao Dan Cultural Park. However, right from February 5, the city authority has decided to stop traffic in several routes in the city. As a result, the traffic congestion occurs on the streets surrounding Tao Dan park.

Le Toan, Deputy Director of the HCM City Public Transport Department has acknowledged that the solution on banning vehicles to turn from Nguyen Thi Minh Khai street to Huyen Tran Cong Chua street proves to be unsuitable, and his department will consider another solution.

Besides the traffic jams, the fact that a lot of grass have been trampled on, has also caused headaches for the organising board.

According to Tran Thien Ha, Director of the Park Development and Green Trees, Deputy head of the organising board, the flower festival this year will be the biggest ever in the city.

It is expected that some 6-7,000 items will be on display at the festival, double 2006’s figure, including the very special items like the ornamental 300 year old thistle, ngoc diem orchid (a kind of orchid) tree with 250 flowers, more than 20 types of flowers from temperate zone, and unique ornamental fish, that have won prizes in foreign contests.

Craftsmen from 10 countries and territories like Thailand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan have registered to display their products.

The flower festival is expected to attract numerous visitors when it opens, and it will be very difficult to control such a big number of visitors. The grass cover in Tao Dan park has been damaged during the preparation process.

Mr Ha said that Tao Dan Park has the area of 9 ha covered with grass. In the previous years, 10,000 sq m of grass were damaged after the flower festival. He said that it takes VND10,000 to plant a sq m of grass.

(Source: Tien phong)