Tanjila Akhi has built a garden of 1,148 plant species on eight decimals of land at her home in Shibchar, Madaripur. About 70 percent of the plants are indoor varieties. Selling through her Facebook page and website, she says she now earns more than Tk 2 lakh a month on average.
It began as a hobby. When she had Covid and had to stay alone, a few plants on her balcony were her company. She started buying plants in 2019, left her job in 2022 to work with plants full time, and began selling commercially in April 2023. Her first purchase was seven or eight species, succulents among them, for Tk 78,000. After moving from Malibagh in Dhaka to Narsingdi, she brought all the plants home in December 2024 and set up the garden there.
She took a six-month entrepreneurship course on indoor plants at BRAC University. Most of her plants were first brought from Thailand and are now propagated in her own garden. Her best sellers are philodendron, aglaonema, snake plant, anthurium, monstera and fittonia; coloured cacti, herbs and stevia also sell well. She says the variegated Tetrasperma aurea in her collection is the only one in Bangladesh.
Plants from her garden go to corporate offices in Dhaka, and she has regular buyers in the city's affluent neighbourhoods. The garden now holds plants worth about Tk 25 lakh. She spends four to five hours a day tending them and another two to three hours packing plants for courier delivery.
Her husband, Md Billal Hossain, an engineer with the Power Development Board, said he helps with all her work and that the couple recently took part in a plant fair in Dhaka. Most sales come through the page 'Wonder Garden BD'.
Tanjila wants to enlarge the garden and plans to work with orchids next. With offices and homes in the cities buying more decorative plants, her homestead nursery is an example for rural entrepreneurs.
The report was filed by Imtiaz Ahmed, Banglanews24's district correspondent.
Photo: Aglaonema in a pot, Sigit Jati / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Banglanews24
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