Historic gardens – Ancient trees

Many centuries ago, woodlands and mountains, steppes and semi-deserts were the natural habitat of human communities. There is hardly any nation whose tales and legends do not mention the wild plants living around them. Their usefulness as food, medicine and raw material, their spectacular life changes during the seasons and the beauty of their flowers captured the human imagination. The mythical trees reaching to the sky, the tree of life, the symbolic species and specimens linked to legendary heroes or events all prove that plants have always meant a lot more to us than mere objects for everyday life.

Trees have played a crucial role in park and garden culture from its beginnings. After the Baroque period of park history, in the mid 18th century, the first landscape gardens imitating natural surroundings were created. The Age of Great Discoveries has made exotic trees fashionable. The world expanded and accelerating long-distance travel helped the introduction of new species from faraway lands. The worldwide passion for collecting plants had also conquered Europe, resulting in the establishment of several new arboreta.
Based on the then popular tree species, we can distinguish two main periods in 19th century Hungarian park history. The so-called “plane period” in the early 19th century, was characterized by large size trees (such as Plane, Pagoda Tree, Black Walnut etc.) whereas later, during the “conifer era”, evergreens became dominant. In the early years, two famous landscape gardens were created by excellent park architects, commissioned by Archduke Joseph of Austria, Regent of Hungary: a grand arboretum on the Archduke’s Alcsút estate, and a city park on Margit (Margaret) Island in Budapest. These two served as a model for many similar gardens of the time. A lot of our ancient “wise trees” today still bear witness to this golden era of park history.

High value arboreta, plant collections and genebanks are vital to the study of plants, our planet’s key organisms. These sites, often as last refugium for rare and endangered plants, have become important workshops for presenting and preserving biodiversity.
Due to our stormy history, the wars, the Communist times, many of Hungary’s once majestic historic gardens and old trees are at the brink of total decay. We should value and look after our remaining garden treasures that harbour our ancient “wise trees”. Preserving them for generations to come is not just our common interest but our duty as well.

Fráter Erzsébet