The Bednarski Park Ash

Krakow protects three European ashes, and this is the only one that does not grow out of a pavement. The other two stand on ul. Straszewskiego and on Plac Kossaka, thicker trunks but boxed in by kerbs and parked cars. This one has a park around it. It measures 278 centimetres round, the figure the city entered when it added the tree to the register in February 2017. Ash is the species that gives Park Bednarskiego its shape: jesiony line the Aleja Okrezna, the circular promenade that carries walkers around the old quarry basin, and this is the trunk the register picked out of the row. The ground is worth knowing about before you get there. The park is a worked-out limestone quarry turned into a public garden from the 1890s, terraced where the stone had been cut away, so everything growing here is standing on an industrial site that was given back. The city rebuilt the park between January 2022 and April 2023 and wrote the old trees into the specification, which is why the promenade still has its ash. No record gives this tree an age, and the park's history is not precise enough to settle it without guessing. A tape measure round the trunk at chest height would get us closer than any document we have found. If you have one, tell us what it says.