The botanic garden in the seaside Balchik may be forced to kill or shorten its biggest cactus plants, the garden's head Ina Mancheva has warned.

If the state doesn't help speed up the building of a new glasshouse for the cactuses, then next year some of the tallest plants will have to go, Mancheva said.

The tallest cactus is already measuring up to four meters, and the Garden's caretakers find it extremely hard to take the plants out in the open and then back into the tiny glasshouse each year. This is an ordeal for the tender plants, especially considering that the heaviest now weighs over half a ton. It takes twelve people to take that plant out and every time they fear they may drop it, Mancheva said, quoted by Bulgaria's BTA news agency.

The current glasshouse only covers 200 square meters and there are more than 1,000 of the large-sized cactuses cramped in there. The Balchik botanic garden's cactus collection is considered to be one of the richest in Europe.

A project for the construction of a new glasshouse spanning on 800 square meters has been ready for years, but building works cannot start because they need the approval of many of the state departments, Mancheva complained.

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