The Copper Beech of Huges' Garden

The same footpath that leads to the weeping beech behind Nieuw Echten passes a second registered tree a few steps further on: a copper beech, its leaves running dark purple-red instead of green, planted about a decade later, in the 1890s. Both trees share the same pocket garden, laid out in the English landscape style around a pond before the Huges family gave the place its name between 1934 and 1970. Where its weeping neighbour is shaped by how it was bred, arching its branches down instead of up, this one is shaped only by where it was planted: a natural, open growing spot with room to spread, which the register credits for its condition. It is straightforwardly healthy, with nothing in the record to flag. Copper beech turns from purple toward copper through October, the colour shift that gives the cultivar its name doubling up for a few weeks before the leaves drop. It is the more dramatic of the garden's two beeches to see at that time of year. Reached the same way as the weeping beech, through the footpath between Alteveerstraat 59 and 61, open to anyone who finds it.