The Copper Beech of Villa Marienlust

In the early 1970s a new clinic in Blasewitz was moved 25 metres to spare this tree. The polyclinic had been drawn on the axis of Villa Marienlust, which meant the copper beech in its garden would have had to come down. Volunteer conservationists negotiated, the building went up further south-east with an angled wing to join it to the villa, and the change cost 30,000 marks, judged at the time a great but necessary sacrifice. The beech was planted in 1849, already four years old, in the villa's 17,000 square metre grounds. The villa now houses a medical centre, the Ärztehaus Blasewitz, whose own history page counts more than 177 years. It has grown about 25 metres tall, with a crown about 24 metres across, so broad and low that it is said to grow like a giant shrub. The register gives its girth as 5.35 metres, but that was measured 30 centimetres above the ground, where any trunk is wider than at the usual chest height. The city made it natural monument number 34 in January 1985, and a plaque on the tree says so. It stands in the medical centre's garden. The crown can be seen from Naumannstrasse, and we have not confirmed whether the garden is open to walk into; if you have been in, tell us. The surviving oak of Hüblerstrasse stands about 450 metres to the south-west.