How a Swiss gardener became Bulgaria’s ‘minister of flowers’

More than a century ago, Swiss landscape architect Lucien Chevallaz had a profound impact on the southern Bulgarian city of Plovdiv. He introduced new plants and modern horticultural techniques to the young nation state in southeast Europe. When Lucien Chevallaz travelled to Plovdiv in southern Bulgaria in 1879, which was still known by its Greek name Philippopolis, he was not driven by adventure or Balkan romanticism. Unlike many Swiss emigrants of his time, it was not poverty that led him to seek a better life abroad. At the age of 39, Chevallaz was already a sought-after landscape architect, and Plovdiv was the next stage in his promising career. Almost a century earlier, in 1875, Chevallaz arrived in a city that was full of optimism. Plovdiv was the centre of the Bulgarian National Revival, a period of socio-economic integration among Bulgarian people and a movement which campaigned against Ottoman rule and in favour of the establishment of an independent state. + Get the most ...