Two stone gateposts stand next to this oak with nothing left between them to mark: they are what remains of the driveway to Port Natal, a psychiatric hospital built here in 1920 and replaced in 1990 by the Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis that occupies the site today. The oak predates all of it. The register's planting band puts it in the 1840s, when this was still the edge of an estate rather than a hospital ground, and the view across an English-style landscape garden from where it stands is, the register notes, still easy to picture. It grows at the waterside, close by Beilerstraat, with a sound, unmarked trunk and a crown the register simply calls reasonable, no drama attached. What has changed around it several times over is what the tree stands next to: a country estate, an asylum, and now a hospital, each replacing the last while the oak kept growing. It is visible from the public street along the former hospital grounds. If you know more of Port Natal's own history, or this oak's, tell us.
In fruit
October, when the acorns come down by the water
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Gemeente Assen, Assen, 9401 RK, Europaweg-Zuid 1, (terrein van Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis , langs Beilerstraat, slootkant)You can recognise it by the two stone gateposts still standing beside it, the last remains of an old driveway. It stands at the waterside along Beilerstraat, on the former hospital grounds.
Free, alongside Beilerstraat on the edge of the former Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis grounds, visible from the public street.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- In the official register: Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen (Bomenstichting), no. 1694885
- monumentalebomen.nl
- services-eu1.arcgis.com