Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' inspires Bosnian park

"Vincent Van Gogh belongs to us too. It's our heritage and this is a way of paying tribute to him," Halim Zukic said.

Behind him, tens of thousands of lavender bushes, grasses and other plants form swirls and spirals across a dozen hectares that -- seen from the air -- unmistakably resemble the celestial configuration painted by the Dutch post-Impressionist master in 1889.

"It wasn't possible to simply reproduce a flat image on a three-dimensional space," Zukic said.

"Inspired by the painting, we tried to stick to the shapes and proportions, so that it looks like the painting as much as possible.

"And I think we succeeded."

The 56-year-old entrepreneur first noticed the land 20 years ago when he was returning from a day out picking mushrooms nearby, in the woods surrounding the village of Luznica in central Bosnia.

He bought the first plot with the idea of building a hut and creating a small, rounded garden.

At the time, he wasn't even thinking about "Starry Night", one of the favourite landscapes in New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

But the idea just clicked in 2018 when Zukic noticed the tracks left on the lawn by a tractor.

"To my eyes, these tracks looked like spirals from "Starry Night" and it was an immediate decision."


- 130,000 lavender plants -

The former insurance company owner, who now works in tourism, bought more land and started working it, helped daily by up to 20-30 gardeners.

He declined to say what it cost to complete his labour of love, which took six years to acquire its final shape.

"We planted around 130,000 lavender bushes, tens of thousands of aromatic and medicinal plants, several thousand trees," he said.

"There isn't a single straight line in the park -- just like in nature."

At the same time, Zukic became interested in Van Gogh, about whom he knew very little at the time.

Today, Zukic talks animatedly about the painter, his "love of nature" and the "passion with which he did his work".

In 2023, he travelled to France to visit the places where Van Gogh spent some of his most prolific years -- Arles and Saint-Remy-en-Provence.

The artist painted "Starry Night" in June 1889 while he was in a Saint Remy psychiatric hospital.

A year later, he committed suicide, aged 37.

For the time being, only a handful of visitors have had the chance to appreciate Zukic's park.

The plants and trees still need time to flourish so the public will need a few more months of patience, he said.

"Having money is not enough. You need time for a park," he said.

"I'd say we've created a good foundation. The park will be more beautiful every year."