The Copper Beech at the Zonnehof

The Zonnehof is a piece of open ground on the edge of the old centre that the twentieth century got hold of, and this beech was standing before any of it. Banded 1880 to 1890, it belongs to the villa gardens that lined the Utrechtseweg when this was the smart approach to the city rather than a through road. Those gardens have gone. The beech is on the northeast side of Zonnehof 2, behind the building that fronts the Utrechtseweg, which is to say in the gap between two eras of construction. Standing under a copper beech in a city is a specific experience worth going out of your way for. The leaves are thin and the purple pigment is a filter rather than a coating, so strong light coming through a mature canopy arrives underneath as a deep wine red. Photographs never get it because a camera corrects it away. You have to be under it, and it wants a bright day. This one is a short walk from the plane on the Snouckaertlaan and from the beech behind the Amershof, so all three fit into twenty minutes. The fourth week of October, if you want it at full colour.