Bulgaria's great spiritual master and teacher Peter Deunov (Beinsa Deuno) advised his followers in his lecture on the energy of nature to show their love to a tree and plant an apple from an apple seed and take care of the sapling until it starts yielding fruit. People should measure the love they carry in their souls with that apple. In Peter Deunov's words, people react instinctively against nature, thus missing the opportunity to benefit from a series of earthly blessings.

Petar Deunov's words were not in vain, because nowadays the Bulgarians are going back to nature, in order to restore lost harmony in their lives. The National Afforestation Campaign Spring 2017 is part of peoples' aspiration for cleaner air and water in Bulgaria. The initiative was supported by many Bulgarian municipalities and state institutions. Young Bulgarian Nikola Rachnev, whose top priority is to plant trees in his country, came up with the idea about that campaign. Thousands of Bulgarians have already supported his initiative in the social networks. Nearly 170,000 saplings were planted in Bulgaria in the past 5 years due to the campaigns organized by Nikola Rachnev. Hundreds of volunteers have joined the afforestation initiatives and their number has been constantly increasing. The 2017 afforestation campaign has already started. Over 5,000 saplings are to be planted in the course of this year's initiative. Over 160 Bulgarian municipalities are willing to participate at the 2017 afforestation campaign, Nikola Rachnev told Radio Bulgaria.

“When someone plants even a single tree, he becomes a more-responsible person and more caring towards nature and society. People love everything they take care of - their children, pets or even items. We feel the same when we take care of nature- we slowly start to be concerned about the quality of the air and the water. The current afforestation campaign includes two components.  On one hand, we are holding voluntary afforestation initiatives in Veliko Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Varna, Shumen, Razgrad, Targovishte and many other Bulgarian towns. On the other hand, we are working together with 300 kindergartens and schools. Children from each kindergarten and school plant 100 trees with our support and the support of their parents.”

A Bulgarian proverb has it that one must plant at least one tree in his life, Nikola Rachnev further said. In his words, each year the number of logged trees in Bulgaria exceeds by 11 billion the number of planted trees. Nikola Rachnev believes that the new afforestation campaign will be fulfilled successfully, because a plant nursery was launched for the purposes of the volunteer initiative. It was named The Plant Nursery of Dreams. It was launched on the premises of an old forest site which was abandoned eight years ago.

“When we plant dozens of thousands of trees we have to produce our own saplings", Nikola Rachnev further explains. "We managed to rent that plant nursery last year for a period of 10 years, although we faced many bureaucratic impediments. It is situated in the village of Malki Iskar near the town of Etropole. We planted over 200,000 saplings from seeds. We consult with professional sylviculturists from various forestries who are also concerned about nature. Our first goal is to plant 1 million trees in Bulgaria by 2020.”

English version: Kostadin Atanasov