Balchik Botanical Garden

After Kaliakra we continued our journey to Balchik, to visit the University Botanical Garden and the Palace. The landscape park was created by Queen Marie of Romania and is now an ensemble cultural heritage. The garden itself is under the jurisdiction of Sofia University, Faculty of Biology and Gaby was lucky to be a volunteer worker there during her first year of study at the university.

The palace was constructed in the late 20s and early 30s of last century, when the territory was shortly under Romanian control. The palace complex consists of residential villas, a wine cellar, a chapel and other buildings and a park. Part of the park is a botanical garden, which was established in 1940, when the territory was reincorporated under the Treaty of Kraiova.

A curious trivia - scenes of Francis Ford Copola's Youth Without Youth were shot in Balchik, which was supposed to represent Malta :)

We thoroughly enjoyed our walk through the gardens and the palace, I hope you'll find this sample of our photos interesting too:

Sofia Botanical Garden

If you ask Sofia residents, only a small percentage of them would know that there is a Botanical garden in Sofia, and an even smaller percentage would know how to get there. Hopefully, things might be changing with the big signs on the ring-road - that's how we noticed it. The gardens have been allotted a solid piece of land at the foot of Vitosha mountain, between Simeonovo and Boyana. So far the operational part is a complex of green houses, the vast land outside is mostly uncultivated. Yesterday our traveling trio visited the Botanical garden and spent a couple of entertaining hours there. Just a few phone-made pictures:

We bought a small red-leaved coleus flower like the ones in the center of the picture:

These golden Mexican balls were the cacti that impressed me most:

Rare desert cacti - living stones and others:

The bougainvillea was magnificent:

A few orchids:

The grounds outside the green house - these could become beautiful gardens with proper funding:

A small piece of land is made into a rosarium:

A giant redwood tree: