In the last few years Hanoi has managed to cover its streets with trees and shrubs to improve urban aesthetics. 

Hanoi decided to plant 600,000 trees in 2018-20.

Thang Long Avenue, one of the main entrances to the city, has seen thousands of date palms being planted on its median strips.

A close-up view of the date palms.

Several species of trees were along Vo Chi Cong Street in Tay Ho District under a similar program through 2018, including Madagascar almond, bougainvillea and leopard.

A Burma padauk tree on Vo Chi Cong Street.

Pham Van Dong Street had thousands of African mahogany trees replaced with others, mainly Burma padauk.

Various plants also grow on Pham Van Dong.

A widening of Pham Van Dong Street forced the removal of around 1,300 trees on a section from the Mai Dich Overpass to the Thang Long Bridge, most of them African mahogany. They have since been replaced with 1,500 other trees.

The median strips along a 20-km section of a road in southwestern Hanoi have trees like date palm and Madagascar almond growing.

There are also bougainvillea and oil palm trees.

The Madagascar almonds planted on Hoang Quoc Viet Street have grown well, with their canopy spreading wide. Other species growing here include oil palm, African mahogany and bougainvillea.

Vo Nguyen Giap Street running from downtown Hanoi to Noi Bai Airport also boasts plenty of vegetation in the form of date palm, mango, mountain ebony, and bougainvillea trees.

Date palms have expansive root systems and are not too vulnerable to pests, making them a good plant to grow, experts said.

Not all streets have seen good results in the tree planting program. Rows of maples on Tran Duy Hung and Nguyen Chi Thanh streets have not grown well, and the city administration has approved a plan to replace them with Madagascar almond trees.