Our Story

As a young boy, our founder was always strongly passionate about plants. Living in a kampung, he gathered plants he found growing in the wild and started a little garden right by the family home. Little did he know that he was not only sowing the seeds for his little garden; he was also sowing the seeds of purpose that would eventually come to define the life ahead of him. 

An entrepreneurial young man, he started a newspaper delivery business right out of National Service in 1974. Not long after, his farmer father purchased farm land in Lim Chu Kang, where the patriarch reared chickens. Facing a manpower shortage, our founder was forced to sell his newspaper business and work full-time in the chicken farm, taking a pay cut in the process. He began settling into his life as a chicken farmer, but soon found the work mundane and soulless.

He rekindled his love for plants and soon started another collection of plants right by farm gates, spending all his spare time tending to and growing his garden. An old school mate driving past the farm saw the plants and enquired if they were for sale. As luck would have it, his friend had just opened a market stall selling plants and would buy plants from growers to resell. With advice and help from some friends and early customers, our young founder soon realised that this was a good way to supplement his paltry pay. Days turned into months and then years. With his first child on the way in 1981, our founder took a leap of faith and turned his passion into the livelihood for him and his wife, and in doing so, gave life to Hua Hng Trading Company.
After 10 years of running the small business at the chicken farm, the lease on the old farm ran out, and the land was taken back by the government for redevelopment. Hua Hng moved to Dairy Farm Road, but unfortunately after just 4 years, the land was yet again taken back for redevelopment. Just then, an opportunity came up. World Farm was then a hydroponics vegetable farm growing leafy greens and the old owners were retiring, but the company had a long land lease and some rickety old buildings.

As the old chicken farms were being relocated out of Choa Chu Kang, our founder knew he had to think ahead if they wanted to keep their business. Wiping out their meagre savings and borrowing heavily from relatives, our founders managed to cobble together just enough money to take over World Farm, and from there grew it from a small backyard operation to become one of Singapore’s largest garden centres through sheer hard work, sincerity, and an acute understanding of customers’ needs.
Along the way, our team grew from just a handful of friends, neighbours and friends to a diverse mish mash of different nationalities, ethnicities and cultures, each bringing along a different set of skills. This proved advantageous and helped us achieve various awards, accreditations and milestones along the way. This includes incorporating Hua Hng as a private limited company in 2008, achieving the ISO 9001 certification for both Hua Hng and World Farm in 2004, and then subsequently achieving the Singapore Excellence Award in 2014 and the SME 100 Award for fast moving companies in 2016.

Today, Hua Hng is a trusted industry leader serving our core customer base of corporate customers, government agencies, institutions and, of course, our loyal base of plant resellers, while World Farm has evolved into a household name that retail customers have come to love and trust for all things gardening related. Between the two companies, we carry out plant propagation, supply plants, pots, landscaping materials, and supplies, and also provide services such as landscape design and build, plant display and rental, as well as conduct educational visits.

Our business model is sourcing and providing a large range of plants and products for our customers at the best prices by having a high product turnover volume. We take pride in our customers-first philosophy, and this has translated into us focusing on relationship and community building while providing the best solutions to customers’ gardening needs.

Our Vision

To be Singapore’s premium garden centre for all things plant and gardening-related

 

Our Mission

To bring greenery into every Singaporean home and office in an affordable and sustainable manner while building a community of like-minded gardeners