Prague, June 8 (CTK) – The Botanical Garden in Prague-Troja opened today a Path of Personalities featuring rare trees, bushes and plants and plants planted by 75 outstanding Czech and foreign personalities of culture, sport, science and politics, a project author, Darina Miklovicova, has told CTK.
The path has been built since 2009. Another 70 names are to be added in years to come, Miklovicova said.
The plants were planted by the late Olympic gymnastics gold medallist Vera Caslavska, Oscar-winning film directors Jiri Menzel and Milos Forman, the Czech-born former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the late saviour of Jewish children from former Czechoslovakia Sir Nicholas Winton, Czech popular singer Karel Gott, world-known Czech surgeon Bohdan Pomahac and one of the best Czech footballers Pavel Nedved.
Rare specimens were planted for some personalities in memoriam by members of their families.
“Thanks to this, plants or woody plants named after Tomas Bata, Alfons Mucha or Otto Wichterle can be seen in the Troja Botanical Garden,” Miklovicova said.
Bata (1876-1932) was a footwear maker, Mucha (1860-1939) an Art-Nouveau painter and Wichterle (1913-1990) contributed to the fundamental improving and world-wide spread of soft contact lenses. All were Czechs.
A real rarity among the planted specimens is the tree of Sir Nicholas Winton who gave the garden a rare graft of his own black mulberry (morus nigra).
There are only three rooted grafts of Winton’s tree in the world.
The garden wants to extend the project with other foreign personalities who are or were directly connected with the Czech Republic.
Already now, visitors can see a tree blessed by the Tibetan Dalai Lama, Miklovicova said.
The Botanical Garden in Troja, which is a subsidised organisation of the Capital of Prague, is visited by 300,000 people annually.
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