The trees in the square in Ostrava got a second chance

Ostrava - The trees planted in the reconstructed Masaryk Square in the center of Ostrava will remain in their places until November. The Ostrava city hall initially wanted the construction company Tchas to replace three dozen unproductive Japanese zelkova trees with larger trees with sturdier canopies. However, today representatives of the city and its central district agreed to wait for eight months. The gardeners from the supplying company will attempt to nurture the trees in the meantime, said Jiří Havlíček, the deputy mayor of Moravská Ostrava and Přívoz, to ČTK.
    "Today we received an expert opinion stating that it is possible to nurture the zelkova trees. I don't believe it much, but we agreed to give the trees another chance. The gardeners will take care of them, and we will see if the condition of the trees improves over the summer. The first formative cuts must be carried out by experts by the end of March," specified the deputy mayor.
    At the beginning of November, representatives of Moravská Ostrava and Přívoz will meet again with the city leadership to assess the success of the gardening care and decide whether the zelkova trees will remain or be transplanted to the outskirts of the city. The leadership of the central Ostrava district had already disagreed with the planting of underdeveloped trees during the approval process and upon taking over the construction, the main investor of which was the city. According to Havlíček, the company Tchas did not follow the project and planted underdeveloped trees from the nursery in the square.
    Tchás spokesman Tomáš Svoboda had previously told ČTK that the planted zelkova trees were ordered according to the project-defined ratio of trunk thickness and crown height. "However, the trees only met one of the parameters - the trunk circumference. Their crowns start too low," he explained. According to him, the nurturing of the zelkova trees will be covered by their supplier.
    The reconstruction of Masaryk Square was completed last May. Nearly ten thousand square meters were newly paved with granite and marble, and brass plates depicting historical events in the city were embedded in the pavement. The Marian plague column was preserved in the square, with a new bust of T.G. Masaryk. A passageway fountain jets directly from the pavement during the summer months. Almost 100 million crowns were provided for the reconstruction by the city, together with the Moravská Ostrava and Přívoz district.