Located in a bowl formed by two sloping hillsides and hidden behind an alley off Le Hong Phong Street in the Central Highlands city of Da Lat, Mr Loi’s nursery is home to some strikingly original and strange varieties of plants.

The distinguished horticulturist, whom the locals like to call their "Barefoot Scientist", is only too happy to talk about his profession, his calling, and likes to point out the distinguishing characteristics of this or that plant as he escorts visitors around his garden.

The man, also known as Muoi Loi, rose to prominence seven years ago when he produced some magnificent combinations of well-known cherries from Da Lat (Lam Dong) and Nhat Tan (Hanoi).

It’s not just cherries alone, Mr Loi will graft anything that shows promise or about which he has a gut feeling, and his instincts are usually proved right.

Inside the nursery, visitors can buy Mr Loi’s reddish purple plums and taste the sweetness they bring. "This variety is the result of grafting man tam hoa (a famous plum strain in the north) to a Da Lat cherry tree," Mr Loi said. "It’s very popular and costs VND15,000 per kilogram for freshly picked plums."

There are also some nice Da Lat cherries grafted onto descendants of the famous Huong Tich apricot trees of the northern province of Ha Tay, and Mr Loi has grafted Japanese cherries onto Da Lat cherries.

He calls this latter plant Nhat Chi Mai, which roughly translates as "one apricot branch". Its blossoms are white and violet instead of the usual pink you see on cherry trees.

Another graft, mixing the Australian plum variety Naterin and Da Lat cherries, bears two types of fruit: one with white flesh called White Naterin, and one with yellow flesh called Golden Naterin.

Mr Loi has also succeeded in grafting the pomelo varieties Hanoi, Nam Roi, Bien Hoa, Thanh Yen and Phat Thu onto the trunk of a single tree. The "five-region pomelo tree" has been thriving and bearing good fruit for five years now. Next to it is a tree created by grafting a Thai pomelo onto a Hanoi pomelo tree.

Mr Loi’s crowning achievement would have to be his success with tung bach tan, a type of conifer that is hard to propagate by grafting. Before starting, he went to the Mekong Delta seven years ago to Sa Dec in the southern province of Dong Thap to learn the special grafting technique from Tu Ton, the only master of grafting sin Vietnam.

Two years later, Mr Loi’s efforts with the conifer bore fruit, as it were, and he’s since cultivated 10 plants, six of which now stand in the grounds of Bui Thi Xuan High School in Da Lat.

Mr Loi also supplied 100 cherry seedlings for planting at the Cu Chi Tunnel Traditional House in Ho Chi Minh City, 60 for Nui Cam Tourist Park in An Giang Province, and some for the resort on Ba Na Mountain outside Danang. All these plants are thriving and should blossom soon.

Another quarter of the nursery houses seedless lemons and seedless Mediterranean mandarins, while at the entrance stands a four-year-old avocado tree created by grafting an Australian avocado strain onto a Da Lat avocado root.

Though the latter is blossoming for the first time, a grower in Bao Loc south of Da Lat has begged Mr Loi to supply him with 100 grafts from the fast-growing tree.

A rather different world is created by the nursery’s ocean of hybridised epiphyllums sporting huge blooms and buds full of promise.

Currently Mr Loi has 500 pots of epiphyllum, some of them with 100 or so pink, white, violet, red or yellow blooms measuring 20-centimeter across and boasting 20 petals.

Seeing is believing, so make an excursion to Thung Lung Dao Hoa and feast your senses on magnificent plants in a beautiful setting.

Saigon Times