Southeast Asia Information Port News (www.dnyxxg.com) – During the May Day holiday, the 2026 World Garden Congress (hereinafter referred to as the "Garden Congress"), themed "Small Families, Big Consumption," was held in Chang'an Town, Haining City, Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. Domestic and international horticulture professionals, along with citizens and tourists, gathered to build a platform for industry cooperation and cultural sharing, using flowers as a medium to appreciate the spring blossoms, discuss industry development, and explore new trends in family gardening consumption.
This year's Garden Congress covered an exhibition area of 500,000 square meters, with a core exhibition area exceeding 100,000 square meters. The event featured themed exhibitions such as clematis and bougainvillea, complemented by designer gardens, merchant gardens, and a flower variety adaptability evaluation area in China. Tens of thousands of flower varieties were on display, creating an immersive floral feast for citizens and tourists to admire, experience, and purchase.
Tourist Cha Yanping and her family drove all the way to the exhibition: "Both my family and my daughter's family have yards, and we enjoy growing flowers. Today we brought a big car to pick out some flowers to take home and plant."
At the exhibition, many exhibitors brought new horticultural varieties. "We've launched our own bred clematis, many of which are new varieties making their debut and are hard to find on the market. Clematis is easy to care for, has a high survival rate, and is very suitable for home planting," explained Huang Huatao, an exhibitor from Tongling, Anhui. He added that they also tailor their products to different demographics—young people prefer lighter colors, while older consumers prefer more vibrant colors… As the permanent host city of the World Garden Congress, Haining has been a part of this grand event for nine years. The city has consistently used flowers as a medium to cultivate a "beauty economy," evolving from scattered nurseries into a vast flower sea industry belt, building a 1,980-mu (approximately 125 hectares) year-round flower sea, attracting 66 well-known horticultural enterprises, and cultivating popular horticultural live-streaming brands and trendy photo spots such as plant libraries and rose walls. The "Flowery Chang'an" beautiful rural demonstration area is gradually maturing.
Data shows that in 2025, the city's entire flower industry chain generated over 1.1 billion yuan in output value, continuously boosting villagers' income and promoting urban-rural integration.
Next, Chang'an Town will continue to promote the transformation and upgrading of the flower industry. It plans to create over 1,600 mu of large-scale flower industry space through 3 to 5 years of development and improvement, forming two core sections: an international flower industry park and a flower industry integration and development zone. These complementary and synergistic initiatives will further strengthen the "Chang'an Flowers" regional public brand.
During the Garden Expo, Haining's leading local horticulture enterprise, Hongyue Flower, announced its international strategic cooperation plan, reaching cooperation agreements with two international breeding institutions from the UK and the US. In the future, the two sides will cooperate deeply in areas such as new variety introduction and breeding, smart horticulture technology research and development, and international horticultural talent exchange, promoting the integration of the local horticulture industry with international frontiers.
A relevant official from Haining City stated that the Garden Expo is not only a professional platform for showcasing new flower varieties and exchanging horticultural technologies, but also an important vehicle for activating household consumption potential and expanding the horticulture industry, injecting momentum into rural revitalization and ecological civilization construction through high-quality industrial development. The garden festival will run until May 3, with the Clematis-themed garden and rainforest garden extending until May 5. (End)
