The Wingnuts of Amstelveld

In 2006 the city government tried to cut down 14 of these trees, and lost. The district council issued a felling permit that summer for over a dozen of the square's 46 Caucasian wingnuts, part of a resurfacing plan under an outdated tree ordinance. Two residents filed objections, then a court challenge, then finally an appeal to the Raad van State, the country's highest administrative court, after a district court sided with the city. No tree was felled while the case ran, and by 2010 the dispute ended with the square fully replanted around the surviving wingnuts rather than in place of them. To protect the three oldest, most valuable specimens from a resurfacing project's foot and cart traffic, engineers installed an underground support system to stop the soil from compacting around their roots, an unusually expensive concession for a handful of street trees. The wingnuts' surface roots still push up paving stones around the square often enough that it is a known feature of walking across Amstelveld, not a defect. The market that runs here on Mondays sets up its stalls under the same canopy the city once planned to remove.