Recultivation of the parc in Cheb’s Podhrad district

Recultivation of the parc in Cheb’s Podhrad district

In Cheb’s town district of Podhrad, at the end of the Ke křížům street, there is a relaxation area with several historic conciliation crosses and a stone base that once held a statue of St John of Nepomuk. The sculpture was later replaced by an impressive metal cross. In the land registry map of 1841, this plot no. 573 is recorded as a road (Wegparzelle) and marked with a cross. As for the stone crosses, according to an article dating from 1902, a group of six crosses was located near the first, wooden railroad bridge leading to Podhrad, on the borderline with a plowed field (headland). One of them might therefore be a boundary stone, rather than a conciliation cross. According to preserved oral accounts, the stones were arranged in such a fashion only later, during the railroad’s construction. (See Friedrich Wilhelm, Alte Steinkreuze im Egerlande, in: Unser Egerland, Vol. 6 (1902), p. 8.) For more information about the crosses, please visit:

http://smircikrize.euweb.cz/Ceska_Republika/Cheb/Podhrad.html

The recultivation of this small park area is another of the Endowment Fund’s projects. The work will involve the levelling of the grounds outlined by five trees, the repair and restoration of the stone base under the cross, the installation of a parc bench, and a few other improvements. One tree will be removed owing to its poor condition. The recultivation work will take place in the fall of 2017. A detailed sketch will be created, together with a cost estimate for minor landscaping work and stonemasonry. This will be followed by the selection of a contractor. The outcome of the Fund’s project will be a pleasant and dignified place for relaxation

Finalization of Recultivation of the Parc in Cheb’s Podhrad District

On November 28, 2017, the ARBO – zahradnictví garden centre, which specializes in landscape designing and planting of private gardens and public greenery and which has been a long-time collaborator of the City of Cheb, officially handed over the completed Podhrad Park recultivation project. Miroslav Falkenauer, a representative of the company, and Michal Pospíšil, technical supervisor of the building project, went through the individual points of the blueprint and checked that these were fully implemented. In terms of composition, the park was re-designed so as to add colour to the grounds, for which purpose three beds of perrenials were newly established – for sunny, partly-shaded and shady spots. With respect to their size, the beds were laid out in a way so as not to compete with the park’s historic artefacts. Next spring, when the plants flower, the site will have a completely different mood. Ground cover plants were chosen for the flower bed around the conciliation crosses. The stone base of the wrought-iron cross was cleaned and suckers were removed from the trees. The bench, which is the dominant feature of the park, is made of stone, complementing nicely the other historic stone elements there. Another reason why stone was chosen for the new bench is that it is fairly resistant to damage and theft.

Visitors can appreciate the new re-landscaped park only next year when the plants enrich the space with colour and the individual surfaces blend together. This is a situation we are used to from other landscape projects conducted by the Historic Cheb Foundation Fund in the recent years: two such examples are the now visually impressive relaxation area around the so-called Goethe Bench en route to the Komorní hůrka hillock and the grounds of the former cemetery in the village of Krásná Lípa near Cheb.