The Holm Oak of the National Garden

The largest holm oak in the National Garden of Athens is old enough to have been planted by Queen Amalia's own gardeners, and big enough that it is rarely matched by wild specimens anywhere else in Greece. Amalia, the Bavarian-born wife of Greece's first king, Otto, commissioned the garden in 1839 as the country's first Western-style landscaped park, bringing in the French landscape architect François-Louis Bareaud to lay it out and filling it with species from across the Mediterranean and beyond. The holm oak is one of the survivors of that original planting scheme, now well past 150 years old, its evergreen canopy dense enough to blacken the ground beneath it even at midday. Unlike the garden's more famous palms and the eucalyptus that arrived later from Australia, Quercus ilex is native to Greece, so this particular tree represents restraint rather than imperial botanical trophy hunting, a local species given room to reach a size it rarely gets in the wild once grazing and firewood collecting are factored in. The tree stands among the garden's quieter paths, away from the pond and the small zoo that draw most visitors. Entry to the National Garden is free, every day, year round.