Let's try a thought experiment. You are in a closed room, without windows, with only a smartphone connected to the Bulgarian Facebook, to get information about what is going on in the country and the world. Soon you will discover that thanks to the content uploaded by social media users, you will be able to keep track of the change of seasons. Everyone complaining about the mile-long traffic jam on the motorway to Greece and/or boasting about their homemade kozunak sweetbreads? Ah, Easter is coming. Your feed is full of little children with heavy rucksacks and gigantic bouquets? Then the start of the school year is just around the corner. There are dozens of photos of Sofia's streets blocked with uncleared snow? Well, it must be December, when winter usually catches the Sofia City Council by surprise.

Eventually, a time will come when your feed will be dominated by... the colour purple. Lots of purple. For a few weeks, every other user will be posting selfies, romantic sunsets and glorious sunrises against rows of lavender stretching to the horizon. What is all this lavender about, you will ask? When did it become a thing for Bulgarians to travel en masse to Provence during the lavender flowering season in July?

No, Bulgarians have not yet started going to Provence to see the lavender in bloom. And they do not have to. In recent years Bulgaria has become the world's leading producer and exporter of fine lavender.

Lavender production is not new to Bulgaria. It has been grown all over the country, including the low mountain slopes of the southern Stara Planina, since at least the 19th century. In the 20th century, production was industrialised, first by entrepreneurs mainly in the Valley of Roses, and then by Communist Bulgaria. A specialised scientific institute dedicated to the development of local essential oil plants of industrial importance – oil-bearing rose, lavender and mint – even developed special machinery for harvesting and insect treatment. New varieties of lavender were selected to improve resistance to pests, disease and cold.

For a time in the 1980s, Bulgaria was a leading international exporter of lavender oil. As with so many other things, lavender oil production declined after the collapse of Communism in 1989, but it gradually revived.

In the 2010s, industrial lavender production in Bulgaria left the confines of the Valley of Roses, the narrow strip of land between the Stara Planina and Sredna Gora mountain ranges that has particularly good conditions for growing oil-bearing plants, including the famous Bulgarian rose. Today, lavender is also ubiquitous in Dobrudzha, in the northeast – a region traditionally and rightly known as Bulgaria's granary, because its heavy black soils are excellent for wheat and other cereals.

Unlike the Bulgarian rose, which can only be harvested by hand and needs a particular climate to thrive, lavender is less fussy. It needs mainly dry soil with a particular acidity and summer heat, and can be harvested mechanically. The life of a plant is around 25-30 years and the market is almost guaranteed. Lavender oil has a wide range of pharmaceutical and cosmetic uses.

Attracted by the growing market, the seeming ease of cultivation and harvesting, and the quick profit to be made, many entrepreneurs took up lavender production. In the 2000s and 2010s, lavender fields began to expand, distilleries opened, and farmers invested in or hired harvesting equipment. In 2012, Bulgaria became the world's leading producer and exporter of lavender oil, overtaking the previous leader, France. This change was made possible not only by increased production and lower labour costs in Bulgaria, but also by a devastating disease that decimated French lavender fields. These were all competitive advantages, although some experts claimed that the quality of Bulgarian lavender oil was still inferior to that of Provence.

Today, Bulgaria produces about 200 tonnes of lavender oil a year.

However, the future of the crop does not look so purple (pun intended). In the summer of 2021, it was announced that about 100 tonnes of lavender oil were still unsold – about half of the 200 tonnes that Bulgaria produced in 2020. By the summer of 2022, Bulgaria's lavender fields had shrunk by 16 per cent, but the better harvest was also bad news, as it meant that even larger quantities of hard-to-sale lavender oil were gathering dust in warehouses.

The quality of this mass-produced lavender oil was also too low. As the laws of supply and demand moved in their predictable way, Bulgarian producers realised that the lavender market was not unlimited and that it required reliable quality. Producers and experts suddenly began discussing how the business needed to be regulated to ensure good practices and proper plant sourcing if it was to survive.

Climate change has also affected Bulgarian lavender. In 2019, unexpected heavy rains damaged the crop in the Dobrudzha, while in 2020 the region's lavender fields suffered from a soil-borne disease, probably activated by a prolonged drought.

Will this be the end of Bulgaria's love affair with lavender?

It is too early to tell. The fact that growers are finally realising that lavender is more than just a way to make a quick profit could be a sign that the future of this crop in Bulgaria is not so bleak. Significantly, in 2023, after 20 years of research and development, Bulgaria even patented three new varieties of lavender. They were promoted as "super-cultures" that would produce more bountiful harvests.

Meanwhile, Bulgarians are still happy to have their photos taken against a backdrop of bright lavender and post them on social media. Especially in July.