The Plane of the Sint Jorisschool

When the Sint Jorisschool went up in 1910 this plane was already seventy years old, and the builders left it where it was. It has stood in a schoolyard ever since. It was planted between 1840 and 1850, when the site was still a green strip along the quay of the river Eem. The strip was built over in 1910 and the new school opened with four classes on the quay side, with a full grown tree already in front of it. That building came down in 1992 and its replacement went up straight away. The register notes, drily, that the tree was reasonably well protected during the works. It is close to two hundred years old now, six metres round at chest height and 27.8 metres tall, with a crown twenty-seven metres across, which is wider than the yard it stands in. Benches used to ring the base for the pupils. At the end of 2021 the paving came out and the yard was resurfaced in wood chips, some of the benches were taken away, and the children moved onto the roots instead. The register's verdict on that, after everything else this tree has absorbed: it seems to cope well. You can see the whole crown from the quay.