The Planes at the Randenbroek Gate

The house at Randenbroek has been rebuilt, extended, cut back and restored since these two planes went in, and they are still at the gate. The national register of monumental trees lists them as a pair at the main entrance to the park, bands their planting to the 1860s and records a trunk 4.81 metres round and a height of 30 metres. In the 1860s Randenbroek was a private country house that changed hands often. It had been auctioned in 1833, shortly after the house was renewed in the fashion of the day, and in 1873 Godert Jan Adolph van Hardenbroek laid the first stone of an extension on the brook side of the house. The planes have outlasted that wing: it was taken down again in the restoration of 1958. The estate is now a public park owned by the city, and the register's most recent look at the pair was in the summer of 2026, so these are about 160 years old and still standing guard. Nobody has written down who planted them or which owner wanted them there. If you know, tell us.