The Boulevard Heuvelink Plane

The last time anyone put a tape around this plane it came to four metres, and that was before 2006. The register liked its rate of growth enough to write down a forecast beside the figure: five metres by 2023. Nobody has been back to find out. If you are on Boulevard Heuvelink with a tape measure, that is a question you can settle in a minute, and we would like the answer. The street matters here as much as the tree. Boulevard Heuvelink came out of the Boulevardplan that Hendrik Jan Heuvelink junior presented in 1877, working from a design his father had drawn twenty years before, and the work was largely finished by 1899. The register dates this plane's planting to somewhere between 1880 and 1900, which falls inside the years the boulevard was being laid out, and it has been the thing that makes the view ever since. A Spijkerkwartier neighbourhood tree survey still refers to it simply as the monumental plane on the street, which is how a local gives directions. The register calls it sound and fast growing, with a strong structure and some root damage on the footpath side, which is what happens when a large tree and a pavement share ground for a century. A second registered plane stands further east near number 197. Free, on the public verge, about twenty minutes on foot from the station.