An ex-army man with the hobby of growing exotic plants set up the first water lily farm in the country. He grows 38 varieties of the flower in ponds created specifically for the purpose on an area of 1.9 hectares near Pleven.

Doychin Vladimirov was inspired for this by a visit to Indonesia where he fell in love with the beauty and refinement of water lilies. He then drew from the experience of the Netherlands. Today the nature lover has set himself the aim of increasing the number of water lilies he grows on his farm. And he has the ambition of selecting a lily variety of his own to compete with the beauty of the most breath-taking lily on his farm – the black princess.

“I had the good fortune to have been invited with my wife by friends to travel to Indonesia,” says Doychin. “And when we saw the exotic beauty of the aquatic tropical plants we were stunned, they went straight to our hearts and stayed there. In Asia they are even more beautiful because of the air temperature and the water – they are in all colours of the rainbow. I said to myself that I must have these flowers, no matter the price, and as soon as we came home I started preparing the ground. With a backhoe I dug up ponds, and that is how it all started. From Indonesia I first brought a lotus, and I got in touch with the biggest lily producer in Europe. At that time I only knew 4-5 kinds of lilies, but he offered me a choice of 350 flowers. That made me realize how limited my experience was, because our market is so tiny compared to the world market.”

Every year Doychin extends his farm. It is his ambition to one day grow more than 100 types of lilies – from the smallest pygmies to the biggest specimens.

“It is such a shame that the naturally growing water lilies in Bulgaria have been destroyed,” he says. “There were once millions of lilies in the rivers Kanchia and Ropotamo which flow into the Black Sea but due to the negligence of the state they were utterly destroyed.”

Yet water lilies are still to be found in Bulgaria – with people from different corners of the country whom Doychin Vladimitrov sends planting material every day.

“I don’t care about money or profit, what I care about is the beauty I create,” he says. “What really touches my heart is when someone buys water lilies from me and then calls me up to thank me for the high-quality of the material. I do everything I can to reinvest the profit in more lilies. We don’t receive any European funding, that is why we reinvest even the small profit we make. Everything we have created has taken a lot of work but we now have the expertise and nothing can stop us.”

The question Doychin Vladimirov is asked most often is how long the lilies will flower. “The truth is that if you take good care of lilies they will bloom from April right up until the first winter cold sets in,” is the answer he gives.

Fotos: Facebook / Doychin Water Plants