Flower and Tree Planting Helps Yang Youping onto the Road to Prosperity
Yang Youping, the boss of Hehua Landscape Greening Co., Ltd., is a very busy person. After arranging to meet her several times, she was either on the road driving out to inspect, or in negotiations with clients. As a successful woman with assets of more than ten million, today's Yang Youping is mature and steady, and no trace of the rural working girl who once rushed about everywhere to make a living can be seen in her at all, but her drive to acquire knowledge and her willingness to learn and dig in have not changed in the slightest.
Yang Youping grew up in Shibantan Town, Dingcheng District. Both her parents were farmers, and because the family was poor, at the age of 19 she had no choice but to step into society and shoulder the burden of life. She worked as a helper in a printing factory and a cement plant, and also did individual transport, and although she saved a little money, it was only enough to make a living. Naturally strong-willed, she was always thinking about doing something that could earn more money.
By chance, Yang Youping saw a report saying that with the country's urbanization, the market prospects for developing flower and tree planting in rural areas were broad. Stirred by the idea of giving it a try, she subscribed to many newspapers, magazines and books such as Hunan Agriculture, Hunan Science and Technology News, and Flowers News, taught herself flower and tree cultivation techniques whenever she had time, made a detailed analysis of the terrain, landforms and climate environment of Shibantan, and also paid her own way to inspect areas in Yunnan, Jiangxi and Jiangsu to learn from their flower and tree planting experience. In 1995, she took out more than 10,000 yuan to buy seedlings such as gardenia, camellia and osmanthus and made a preliminary trial planting in her family's 5 mu of contracted farmland. Over the course of a year, she cared for those flowers and plants as carefully as if they were her own children. Heaven rewards the diligent, and a year later, the 5 mu of flowers and trees brought a net profit of 20,000 yuan.
At that time, the other villagers in the village were still engaged in traditional agriculture, working hard but earning meager incomes. Yang Youping was determined to mobilize the villagers to develop the flower and tree industry, and her ideas and successful example touched the villagers' hearts. In order to help the villagers get rich, she did her utmost. When they did not understand the techniques, she taught them hand by hand; when there was no capital, she advanced the money and gave seedlings on credit first. Through several years of effort, Shibantan's flower and tree industry gradually took shape, and the villagers' incomes also rose to the top ranks of Dingcheng District.
In 1998, Yang Youping established Hehua Landscape Greening Co., Ltd., and by adopting the "company + base + farming households" model, she put her flower and tree planting on the fast track. Up to now, the company has more than 100 employees, including 37 engineering professional and technical personnel and 7 personnel with senior technical titles, and has formed a planting scale of a thousand-mu base and more than 200 varieties. The company has successively created a number of excellent projects for the city's urban landscaping and highway greening. The Liuye Lake Scenic Belt, the greening renovation of the northern section of Wuling Avenue, and the greening of the Changde-Zhangjiajie Expressway have all been praised by experts as models of greening projects.