The Beech of St Elisabeth's Gasthuis

The hospital this beech stands in front of is now a block of flats with a dental practice in it. The tree did not move. St Elisabeth's Gasthuis on Utrechtseweg is a protected national monument, listed as a complex on the state's own register, and has been converted into apartments under the name St. Elisabethshof. The beech went into the ground in front of it between 1890 and 1900, which puts it at around 130 years old. It stands on the street side rather than in any courtyard behind the building, so there is no gate, no bell and nobody to ask. Under history the national tree register has written nothing whatsoever. That is the usual fate of an institutional tree. Somebody ordered it, somebody dug the hole, the annual reports recorded the patients rather than the planting, and a century later the beech is the only thing on the plot still doing the job it was put there for. It is about twelve minutes on foot from Arnhem Centraal, uphill along Utrechtseweg, which makes it an easy first stop before the parks further out. The register is the only source that has recorded this tree, and its dating is a decade-wide band rather than a planting record. If there is a photograph of the Gasthuis with a young beech in front of it, that would date it better than we can.