ARBORETUM TRSTENO S/S

The First Day Cover (FDC) was also issued. Motif: The commemorative stamp features the Neptune fountain with spring water and a part of the old Renaissance park which is still the optimal representative of the present-day picture of Trsteno. Trsteno - the Renaissance garden, later arboretum, was planted at the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century around the summer villa of the well known Ragusan noble family Gučetić (Gozze) at the time of the flourishing of the Ragusan Republic. The additional reason for the placement of the garden and the villa was the water spring; the name Trsteno is derived from trska, the Croatian name for the reed growing near the water. The original appearance of the gardens entirely expresses the Renaissance skill of garden layout practised by old Ragusans. Following soon after the advent of the first Florentine Renaissance gardens, before those planted in Rome, the citizens of Dubrovnik embraced the new joy of living in re-shaped nature. They added the refined measure of harmony with the surrounding nature to the Florentine model, and enriched the garden with useful content (trellised grape arbour, fishpond instead of a fountain, etc). There is a stone tablet originating from the year 1502 with a carved inscription ordered by Ivan Gučetić, together with his signature on the tablet. This inscription is the best proof of this spirit: "I am proud of my neighbours, but I am more proud of the water, the healthy climate and the work of the serene master. Here, traveller, you can find evidence of man's toil, where worthy art enhances wild nature". "Worthy art" has contributed to the creation of a specific style of the Ragusan Renaissance garden, not yet known well enough in the European art of garden layout. The simplicity of this Croatian monument of gardening architecture, indicatively named "The Croatian green cathedral", can be proved by the existence of a number of most significant styles of European gardening art: the Renaissance foundation is followed by the sequence of the Baroque Neptune fountain (from the year 1736), while quite recently a part of the original nature has been ennobled by the image of an English natural garden with a Romantic atmosphere (this part was almost completely burned down in the last great fire). The arboretum Trsteno has been registered as a monument of garden architecture in the ledger of protected natural objects on October 27, 1962 with its area of 28.55 hectares. Trsteno has been burned down twice in the recent past: first, during the Croatian War of Independence, on October 4 and 5, 1991, and then in the disastrous fire on August 27 and 28, 2000. Trsteno is being managed by HAZU, the Croatian Academy of Science and Arts, after the last count, Vito Gozze, issued the deed of gift by which he gave the estate of Trsteno to the Academy in 1948. The Academy founded a Restoration Committee on March 1, 2001 with the aim accomplishing an overall restoration of both parts of the gardens, the Renaissance part and its Baroque sequence, as well as the burned down English part of the park that is by its structure very close to the arboretum status - primarily with the aim of scientific-expert research of the acclimatization of foreign species of shrubs and trees to our Mediterranean climate. In this way such a definition of the completeness of Trsteno as an object of garden architecture and an arboretum will offer an unavoidable contribution to the future of Croatian tourism.