Alpine flowers are among the most attractive harbingers of spring, and they are at their most enchanting in the mountains. Each May, a festival in the Bohinj valley gives visitors an opportunity to examine these flowers first-hand – and to reflect on their fragility.

The Bohinj International Wildflower Festival was first organized in 2007; it was the brainchild of a Scottish conservationist named Ian Mitchell who had fallen in love with Slovenia’s landscapes. The event consists of a number of flower-related worships. Among other things, professionals teach visitors how to take photographs of flowers, while beekeepers share the secrets of their profession and explain the role of different flowers in the production of honey. The more intrepid can even head up above the tree line as part of organized flower-watching tours.

Guides place special emphasis on Slovenia’s endangered plants, many of which are threatened by humans and can only survive if people become more aware of their plight. At the same time, various presentations emphasize the benefits of properly managed flower meadows. Several years ago, the entire festival was devoted to the use of medicinal herbs from Slovenia’s mountains.

The festival takes place in the middle of May and the timing isn’t a coincidence: this is the period just before the grass is cut on the Alpine pastures, and the first bloom of the season gives visitors an opportunity to see as many as 1000 varieties of flowers and other Alpine plants.

Bohinj has seized on the festival as another opportunity to promote the area’s natural splendors. So far, the strategy seems to be paying off: In 2015, the guidebook publisher Lonely Planet named Bohinj one of the 10 best family destinations anywhere. Meanwhile, the festival is introducing thousands of Slovenians to a still-too-little understood part of their country’s mountain landscape.