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Wednesday, August 30, 2000
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Botanicus queen Dana Hradecka grows herbs while the sun shines By Alan Levy Babicka (Granny) Bohumila presided over the 15-hectare (37-acre) Syrovy farm's main building: Hospoda U Syrovych (Pub at the Syrovys), which was dominated by her strong personality. After the communists seized the property and nationalized the pub in the 1950s, she stayed on as a state employee. When they closed the pub in the '60s to rebuild the farm as residences for two top Communist Party leaders, she refused to vacate her two rooms (without inside plumbing) so the communists built elsewhere, after stealing the farm's bricks to build with. Every time the state took something away from the Syrovys, Bohumila's son Frantisek would go to court or to some registry and mount a formal challenge to each act of appropriation. Though Frantisek's tactic seemed futile and costly -- barred from academic studies, he worked as a forester and later as an official in the Department of Woods and Water -- came the revolution in 1989, a year after Bohumila's death, and the Syrovys were first on line for restitution of their crumbling property, which they won in 1990. Frantisek married Marie Seifrtova, a village girl from Ostra, and they had two daughters: Alena, good with numbers, attended Charles University and now teaches mathematics. Five years her junior, Dana hated math, studied natural science at Prague Agricultural University and delighted in learning Russian and German. At the agriculture university, Dana fell for "an anarchic introvert" from Melnik named Jan Hradecky. A couple of years behind Dana in school, he celebrated her graduation on Aug. 21, 1989, by taking her down to Wenceslas Square to join the small crowd protesting the Soviet invasion 21 years earlier. They were clubbed and gassed in a prelude to that November's revolution. Ing. (Engineer) Dana Syrova went to work near Ostra at an innovative Plant Propagation Unit in Semice. In cooperation with the Research Institute for Medicinal Plants in Prague, she initiated cultivation of evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) seedlings for the production of oil from an herb credited with fighting such afflictions as multiple sclerosis and pre-menstrual syndrome (when taken internally), psoriasis and eczema (externally). Her laboratory worked closely with foreign clients, especially Britons. One day in 1992, one of them asked for a body on behalf of a friend named Malcolm Stuart -- a biologist, virologist, horticulturist and herbal medicine man who needed a helper at his Cambridge Physic Garden in England. Sensing an opportunity to learn English, and more about the potential development of dietetic and medicinal crops, Dana decided to take a quick weekend look at the job herself. She and Milos Landsman, a 60-ish interpreter from Semice, took a 24-hour bus journey to London, during which Landsman taught her to say "wonderful white cliffs of Dover" and very little more English. Waiting at the other end was Dr. Stuart, then 45. He remembers welcoming "a tired old man and a village truck driver who came bouncing off the bus, stuck out her hand and said, 'Goodbye, I'm Dana.'" For calling her that, she says now in impeccable British, "I will never forgive Malcolm." Stuart took them to Cambridge, where Dana fell in love not only with the style and venue of his private botanical garden, but also with his family, with whom she would live for a year. After one night there, she and Landsman boarded the bus back to Bohemia. On Monday, she told her employer she was taking a year's sabbatical. Beginnings of Botanicus Upon finding Stuart a university classmate to replace her, Dana returned home at the end of 1992 because she wanted to be near her fiance Jan, who was helping her father rebuild the family farm. But the property stood in ruins when Dr. Stuart paid a February 1993 visit to the Syrovys at Dana's invitation. Nevertheless, Stuart liked what he saw. He was back a month later asking to meet his hosts' agriculture-university classmates and colleagues. "Pull all these bright, eager young people together," he told Dana and Jan. "Reach out into the villages around you. Teach about the plant kingdom. Grow stuff." And sell it. And grow rich. In April 1993, a company called Botanicus was chartered in Ostra with an investment of 25,000 Kc (then barely $1,000) by Dr. Stuart with the Hradeckys (Dana married Jan in 1995) as equal partners. They started by making potpourri -- a fragrant mixture of petals and spices -- and moved on to handmade soaps, cosmetics and bath oils, pencils and paper, candles, ceramic pots, wicker baskets, cloth, fresh-fruit breads and teas, all with herbs and crops grown organically, using no artificial fertilizers, pesticides or chemical dyes. And everything was made in and around Ostra -- even the boxes in which they shipped Botanicus products to 1,500 Czech stores and tearooms. In 1997, they moved from wholesale to retail by opening a flagship Botanicus store in the beautiful Ungelt courtyard of Prague's Old Town. Today, there are more than two dozen Botanicus shops in the Czech Republic: mostly in historic parts of towns like Trebon, Cesky Krumlov and Kutna Hora, but also in department stores like Bila Labut and Tesco in Prague 9-Letnany. Last year, Botanicus formed a strategic partnership with The Body Shop International empire, and this September will find Dana opening four Botanicus stores in England as well as researching new products there. Birth of a businessman Most miraculously, dissident introvert Jan Hradecky proved to be a genius of a business manager, rationalizing every detail and recycling materials from a dismantled sugar factory nearby into the framework for a Botanicus theme park on the Syrovy farmstead in Ostra. When its first full season ends Sept. 30, it will have attracted some 30,000 paying visitors. Jan sits on the local Town Council as its vice chair, as well he might, for Botanicus has reversed the region's youth flight to the city by providing jobs for 150 locals, plus home-handicrafts piecework for many more. He and Dana had a son, Tomas, in 1997, and they've enrolled him at nursery level in Prague's English International School. Frantisek Syrovy, who trains young gardeners in Ostra, will chauffeur his grandson to and from Prague thrice a week. Says Dana: "We want Tom to grow up bilingual. Now, if only Malcolm Stuart will learn Czech." The "village truck driver" strikes back. Alan Levy's e-mail address is alevy@praguepost.cz
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