Re-greening the heart of Moravská Nová Ves with a newly planted avenue and park

In March, we planted a linden alley next to the local church along with residents of Moravská Nová Ves and volunteers from Hnutí Brontosaurus. Just below the hillside, in place of a home which the tornado destroyed, we planted cherry trees, almond trees, chestnut trees, and a solitary fir tree. Replanting this area creates a green heart for the village that will beautify and cool it, which is noticeably absent today.

Enthusiasts planted symbolic linden trees in addition to fruit-bearing trees

Village mayor Zuzana Jandáková, as well as former mayor Jana Krutáková, even joined to help with the planting. Filip Šálek, vice-chairman of the Ardea Břeclav Hnutí Brontosaurus branch and specialist in nature conservation projects, organised the event. Together with fifteen Brontosaurus volunteers, they set to work with incredible vigour and energy, finishing the project in less than four hours.

Eleven silver lindens will surround the church, providing beauty and serenity. Along with the adjacent park containing sixteen fruit, chestnut, and fir trees, they will form a green dominant of Moravská Nová Ves, which Atelier LOUKA, from Mikulov, designed. These trees are quite tall, and some of them are already flowering.

"Our previous conversations with municipal leadership and residents of Moravská Nová Ves have shown that the loss of the trees had a rather depressing effect on them," says Magdalena Davis, our Czech Climate Programmes Director, who was involved in the project’s organisation and implementation.

Podluží needs trees

According to our project manager, Roman Klecker, who has been working in South Moravia since 2021, it will take decades for the area in and around the village to become greener: "There are large areas of land here that lack any kind of vegetation , and most of the windbreaks are too old. We need landowners to agree to restore and plant new trees because there is huge wind erosion."

Municipalities financed most of the damaged greenery restoration through the National Environment Programme to restore greenery after the tornado. Still, it was impossible to access the funds in the centre of Moravská Nová Ves because there used to be a housing development there. At the same time, the entire Podluží region needs more systematic landscape improvements in many places to withstand the consequences of long-term landscape mismanagement and future climate change effects.

"We are very pleased to have been able to help the village leadership when they could not get funding elsewhere. We support the trend of returning greenery to the centre of villages, as mature trees have been proven to cool their surroundings by up to 5 degrees Celsius," says Magdalena Davis, describing the great advantage of planting in the inner city.

A school in Hodonín demonstrated the importance of trees in cooling the environment. After a tornado destroyed the adjacent forest, the school had to invest in air conditioning because of classroom heat. Thus, planting trees is an investment not only in the village’s aesthetic appearance but also in a more comfortable life for its inhabitants.

Since 2022, our participatory project has been running in Dolní Bojanovice, which was washed away by a flood in 2021, and we are helping other municipalities in the Podluží region with climate action plans. As part of the international EUKI-ELCA project, we are putting together a team of local climate managers and will be opening a community centre for climate protection in Hodonín.