Ahsanullah used to visit the botanical garden here almost every day as a child. He lived nearby, and loved plucking flowers from the garden to carry them back home.
He slowly started growing roses in his own flowerpots. His neighbours started to buy them, and he soon had a little business running.
Ahsanullah expanded, and today cultivates flowers over 70 acres of land. He now owns a bungalow here and his annual earnings have crossed $8,000, reports Xinhuanet.
Flowers are gaining in popularity in Bangladesh, and Ahsanullah is one among thousands of floriculturists making their fortune from them.
Flowers can be seen everywhere in the world's most densely populated country today. Flower shops abound in cities and towns and rooftops are full of flowerpots. You can see children running around with flowers in hand even in cities.
People have moved away from using paper and plastic flowers on social occasions to natural ones. At a wholesale flower market here, some 700 floriculturists do business worth at least $16,000 every day.
A number of related businesses have sprung up along side.
Nina Faruk, for instance, has turned her childhood hobby of decorating houses with flowers into a profession. She now decorates at weddings, birthdays and even official functions.
"The flower trade has enough potential here," said Faruk. "But the country is not self-reliant in flower production and flowers are imported from India, Thailand and Malaysia."
In spite of the demand, cultivation remains on the lower side. There are no official records but sellers claim that roses and tuberoses cultivated domestically meet only two-thirds of the demand.
Syed Hadiuzzaman, a professor at the Botanical Department of Dhaka University, said even technologies used to increase the life span of flowers were not available in the country.
"This is the job of genetic engineering, which has not been developed in Bangladesh. If these technologies had been available, we would be able to produce flowers even commercially," he said.
Said Faruk: "The government needs to help floriculturists. Without the government's help, growing flowers and trading in them on a large scale won't be possible."
--Indo-Asian News Service`