The Horse Chestnut of Rooseveltova

A car park nearly wrote the end of this chestnut's story. When plans came up for an underground garage beneath the little park on Rooseveltova, the architecture press covered them as a question about one tree: whether digging that close to a protected trunk would take its roots with it. The tree is a horse chestnut of about 160 years, protected since 2007, standing in the middle of the park opposite the Janáček Theatre and a short walk from the old Governor's Palace. It survives from the first redesign of this ground after Brno's fortifications came down, when a strip that had carried walls became gardens instead. Its trunk measures between 320 and 326 centimetres at chest height, two numbers from different surveys rather than two different trees, and it stands about 25 metres tall. In 2019 the park around it was renamed Park Danuše Muzikářové. The tree kept its own name, Jírovec maďal na Rooseveltově, and its own quiet job in the city's year: in May it is the flowering tree in a square full of theatre-goers, and by late September the ground beneath it is a conker supply for anyone who wants one.