Ten new trees for Reitbahnstraße
Sponsors are donors and last year's winners of the "City Cycling" campaign
On Monday, 25 April, at 2.30 pm, Andreas Streich, Head of Department at the Parks Department, will symbolically hand over ten street trees on Reitbahnstraße between Moritzstraße and Annenstraße to mark "Arbor Day". The trees are scarlet chestnuts (Aesculus x carnea Briotii), which were planted in December 2021.
Six trees were dedicated to the winners of the individual categories of the 2021 "City Cycling" campaign. A total of 1,678 people from Chemnitz took part. Within three weeks, around 326,000 kilometres were cycled, saving around 48 tonnes of CO2 that would have been produced by the same journey by car.
Businesses from the Reitbahn district have agreed to symbolically sponsor four of the trees. The businesses along Reitbahnstraße, the Reitbahnviertel citizens' initiative and the city centre district management have long campaigned for the trees to be planted. The greenery provided by the ten "tree gifts" will further enhance the shopping street.
Both the tree sponsors and some of the city cycling winners will be on site on Monday. Representatives of the media are cordially invited to attend.
City cycling: Registration for this year's campaign now open
The city of Chemnitz is once again taking part in the nationwide "City Cycling" campaign this year. From 5 to 25 September 2022, all Chemnitz residents and everyone who learns, studies or works in Chemnitz can pedal hard - for their own health, for a good quality of life and for the climate. Registration is now open.
Background street trees
Street trees are of particular importance for the inner-city climate and the associated quality of life for people and animals in the city. The metabolism and shading effect of large old trees equalise the temperature. Back in 2012, the city of Chemnitz included the provision of street trees on public streets in its integrated climate protection programme as a component of the city-wide planning strategy. In 2017, the city council adopted the street tree concept, which forms the basis for action for the long-term protection and development of street trees. The planting of street trees is a joint task for landscape architects, urban planners and road engineers.
Street trees must thrive under particularly difficult site conditions, so that their needs must be taken into account right from the start of planning in order to maintain and develop the stock in the long term and to ensure the local authority's duty of care. To ensure that street trees fulfil their functions even under the conditions of climate change, it will be necessary in future to identify heat- and drought-tolerant tree species and varieties and to test their suitability for street areas. Better-adapted tree species and non-native trees will become indispensable in city centre areas.
The people of Chemnitz can also do something for the city's greenery. This is possible through tree sponsorships or by looking after street trees in front of their homes, removing weeds, rubbish and uncontrolled growth around their trunks and regularly maintaining the tree grates or watering street trees in the summer heat.