TIANJIN, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- Wang Kun, who was previously a white-collar worker in Beijing, now takes care of 300,000 trees scattered across the landscape in his hometown in northern China's Tianjin Municipality.

"Planting landscape trees improves air quality and enriches urban color," said the 32-year-old owner of a 33.3-hectare planting base.

Wang mainly plants multiple acer rubrum cultivars of red sunset, autumn blaze and autumn fantasy. Unlike the commonly planted willows and poplars, the salt-tolerant maples brighten fall months with brilliant red leaves.

In a 300-square-meter greenhouse, mist irrigation starts every few minutes to ensure some 20,000 rubrum trees take root in the sandy soil.

The idea of making tree breeding a career popped up into Wang's mind six years ago when he spotted a gap in the market.

"There was a lack of color in autumn as we had so many yellow-dominated landscape trees," Wang recalled.

However, it was not an easy start. Wang, who studied packaging engineering in college, did not have a green thumb when it came to growing trees.

After learning from books and doing fieldwork, Wang felt he was finally ready to start his business. He bought tens of thousands of red sunset maple saplings and took good care of them. Unfortunately, all of them died.

The money loss rankled the family. Wang turned to experts and conducted repeated experiments by constantly adjusting the temperature, humidity, light and soil of his greenhouse.

He eventually found half of the saplings survived by trial and error, and later the survival rate grew to 90 percent.

Liang Xiaogang from Cashway Fintech Co., Ltd., has been satisfied with the 50 autumn blazes he bought from Wang to celebrate the company's 15th anniversary and looks forward to enjoying the cascade of red leaves in late fall.

Landscape gardens hold an important position in traditional Chinese culture and reflect people's aesthetic appreciation and the realm of life, said Wang Guanqiang, a Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts graduate and now assistant professor at Macao University of Science and Technology.

"The landscape design industry will flourish as the construction of the urban environment continues," Wang Guanqiang said.