The Copper Beech by the Pond

A generation younger than the beech at the back of the upper garden, and planted where it would be reflected. This is the second copper beech in these gardens and the placing is the point of it. It stands on the west side of the pond, which means the water sits between you and the tree for most of the approach, and a dark purple canopy over still water is a trick that landscape gardeners had worked out long before anyone here was planting. The register puts it between 1840 and 1850. By then the copper beech was no longer a novelty and had settled into being a standard part of the vocabulary, the heavy dark accent you put where a composition needs weight. What two centuries add is bulk that no design anticipated. These trees keep thickening long after they stop rising, so a mature one ends up out of scale with everything planted alongside it, and the garden quietly rearranges itself around the biggest thing in it. Go on a still morning and look at the water rather than the tree.