Catarina is one of the municipalities with the greatest tourist development in the department of Masaya. Through its streets of the old town, dozens of national and foreign visitors circulate whose destination is to reach the beautiful viewpoint that offers a pleasant climate and a majestic panoramic view of the charming Laguna de Apoyo, the Mombacho volcano and the colonial city; Grenade.
The boom in visitors became a business opportunity for the families of this municipality who are dedicated to the sale of colorful and attractive ornamental plants, which national tourists seek to embellish the corridors and patios of their houses with a natural touch.
The gardens that offer dozens of varieties of plants, palm trees and roses, are beginning to be located on the banks of the road and along the route of the main road that leads to the viewpoint, where visitors aboard their vehicle come making stations, to the purchase of ornamental plants, grass, fertilized land and flower pots.
gardens for life
These gardens represent a source of income for dozens of families in this municipality. A success story is the “Nica Ruiz Garden”. In this family business all its members have been trading plants for more than 20 years. They have a nursery, where they reproduce them taking advantage of the vast land that their property has.
“This was one of the first gardens in Catarina, started at her house by my aunt Silvia Nicaragua Ruiz, with shade plants like flamingos. At the beginning we located ourselves on the street to the viewpoint, but after a few years, we moved to the house taking advantage of the second entrance to the municipality, where tourists circulate”, points out Giovanny Ruiz.
This nursery is also dedicated to the construction of gardens in homes and businesses. Most of her clients come from Managua and the coastal areas of the Rivas department, who demand colorful plants that resist the high summer temperatures.
“One of the last jobs we did was the decoration of La Calzada street in the colonial city of Granada, where national and foreign tourists on their tour of this historic site have an environment surrounded by nature,” said Giovanny Ruiz, who He graduated as a clinical bioanalyst, but finally decided to dedicate himself to the care and reproduction of plants.
A marriage with “good crops”
In 2012, Daniel Alvarado together with his wife Tania Guerrero decided to venture into the business of selling ornamental plants, in search of a source of income to maintain their home. At the beginning, they rented a piece of land located in the vicinity of the Santa Catalina church, offering varieties of plants, but soon after, customer demand increased, so they had to diversify their offer with exotic plants brought from Costa Rica.
“We started with few plants, because we were young and did not know how to manage this business, but our relatives already had experience and they showed us the places where we should buy and offer the plants with the most customer demand. Years later, we became experts and today we thank God that thanks to this business, we have raised our three children”, says Guerrero, very proud of the achievements of her family.
This couple takes advantage of social networks to promote their plants. There you find the best orchids, red stems, varieties of entwined laurels, varieties of palm trees and bonsai, and thanks to this strategy, they achieve orders from companies and families in the cities of Managua and Granada.
These entrepreneurs report that previously they bought their plants in nurseries in Niquinohomo and Masatepe, but for more than five years the peasant families of the Pacaya community in Catarina saw an income opportunity in the cultivation of ornamental plants and today they became the largest suppliers of the gardens of this tourist town.
For your dream garden
It is estimated that in Catarina, more than fifty families are dedicated to the commercialization of ornamental plants and nursery care. One of them and with the greatest variety of plants is Torenias, which is located at kilometer 40 of the highway that leads to Masaya. Here, the visitor has a great variety of plants that they can choose to beautify the garden of their home.
“We started to grow plants on a piece of land that was a pasture. The idea was to sell the ornamental plants to the gardens in the area and to the people who traveled to sell to the departments of the country, but we realized that it was more profitable to sell them direct to the client. The business was successful, to the point that we opened a garden at the entrance to Las Colinas in Managua and a second establishment in the roundabout of the municipality”, emphasizes Orlando Franco Nicaragua.
Today Torenias has two additional nurseries, where they produce their plants, and even a garden design department, where two architects are in charge of preparing the gardens for residential areas, companies, and tourist centers.
By United Voices
