Two plane trees stand opposite the church of St. George in the Zagrade quarter of Garmen, and the older, famous one took second place in European Tree of the Year 2011 with 18,374 votes, a year after winning Bulgaria's own national contest. It appears on the municipality's coat of arms. Sources disagree on its exact age, putting it between 600 and 650 years, and even on when it was first protected, 1961 or 1968. Local legend holds Ottoman janissaries once set it alight, and villagers put the fire out.
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The Zagradski Plane (Zagradski Chinar)
Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) · roughly 600 to 650 years · Zagrade, Garmen
Two plane trees stand opposite the church of St. George in Garmen, and the famous one is the older of the pair. The Zagradski Plane took second place in European Tree of the Year 2011 with 18,374 votes, a year after winning Bulgaria's national contest, and it appears on the municipality's coat of arms.
It is 24 metres tall and 10.46 metres round. How old it is depends on who you ask: the contest and a Bulgarian tourist guide say more than 600 years, while Bulgarian Wikipedia gives about 650, from a 1968 survey estimate. Even the year it became protected is disputed, 1961 in one source and 1968 in two others. Somewhere between 550 and 700 years covers every reading.
The same 1968 survey put the tree beside it at around 300. Together they are the Zagrade planes, standing in what was once a separate village and is now a quarter of Garmen, on the road from Gotse Delchev to Marchevo.
The legend is better than the paperwork. Ottoman janissaries are said to have set the tree alight to punish a villager who warned others that the water had been poisoned, and the villagers put the fire out, leaving a scar. Nobody has documented it. What is documented is the use: weddings and village gatherings under the crown, storks roosting in season, and in 2017 a Rotary Club project that turned the ground around the two trees into an open-air museum.
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