Natural values

Natural values

Scenic and natural resources around the Palace in Rogalin 

In the eighteenth century, appreciating the beauty of the surroundings of Rogalin, Kazimierz hr. Raczynski built his impressive ancestral home here with great sensitivity. Some of the characteristic elements constructed from the former canon’s residence have survived to this day and were extremely skillfully incorporated into the existing terrain– the front yard, the economical and honourable courtyards in front of the palace, followed by the rococo garden (one of the few remaining in Poland).

The spatial concept of the village has changed little since the post war period and has been consciously shaped by many generations. The proportions and the separation of its individual components have survived : the palace - the manor house, the more remote country estate, the flock, the distillery, the settlement, the expanse of fields, meadows, forests, the eighteenth-century border pillar from the old track to Poznan, and the layout including the boulevards lined with trees. Nationally, this is a unique phenomenon. The interference of generations of people who lived has clearly been minimal as the existing natural environment has little changed. The creators of the landscaped park surrounding the romantic palace (formerly 300 acres, currently the responsibility of the Museum 27 ha), worked with the same concepts and have shaped the natural environment discreetly, allowing it to retain its wild character.

Fortunately, all the generations of the family living in the Raczynski Palace in Rogalin proved to be faithful to this principle in practice. At the end of the twentieth century, it was decided to protect the intact and extremely precious landscape by the establishment of the Rogalin Landscape Park and by laying down large conservation areas under the European Natura 2000 programme, including a special area for the conservation of habitats, the "Rogalin Valley of Warta", and the for the protection of birds in the "Rogalin Refuge". In addition, programme for the protection of forest genetic resources and selected trees has been implemented, aimed at regenerating the original forest in a way that adapts best to the regional climate and soil conditions.

Of particular concern within the framework of these projects are: the landscape (the lagoon’s wide terraces with their steep slopes in the broad Warta River valley, covered with floodplain with meadows, oxbow lakes and ponds); the magnificent specimens of pedunculate oak - Quercus robur (numerous sole survivors - remnants of the ancient hornbeam woodland, which in 1992 contained 1,435 such examples with circumferences in diameter at a breast height of from 200 to 915 cm); the habitats (willow, poplar, alder and ash; riparian forests of oak-elm-ash; Pomeranian sour birch-oak forest; Central European and subcontinental hornbeam forest; lowland and extensively used mountain hay meadows; fluctuating Molinia meadows; alluvial meadows; oxbow lakes and natural eutrophic lakes; flooded muddy banks of rivers; thermophilic, inland grasslands; tall, humid mountains; riverside herbs); the insects (beetles - hermit beetle, Capricorn beetle, stag beetle, dragonfly - Ophiogomphus cecilia, Large White-faced Darter; swallowtail butterflies); the fish (asp, goatfish, eel), amphibians (toad); the reptiles (sand lizard, Vipera berus); the birds (medium and green woodpecker, bald eagle, lesser spotted eagle, red and black kite, kingfisher); the mammals (bats - big brown bat, bastelle, beavers, otters, boars, roe deer, stags), and many other creatures. 

Author: Piotr Wilanowski