The Planes of Kalverbos

Three plane trees went into Kalverbos around the years Delft finished the red-brick water tower that still looms over the park. Construction started in 1895, the tower pumped the city's water until 1996 and has since become a venue for parties. The register that protects these trees describes them standing in the same historic setting as the tower, an old bench and the graves nearby, planted as the park found its final shape. Kalverbos itself began as a cemetery, in use for 46 years before Delft moved its dead to the Jaffalaan in 1874. Its conversion into a public park in 1894, laid out by garden architect Hugo Poortman in the romantic landscape style, gave it the winding paths it still has. These planes, dated to 1890 to 1900, are close to that age, among the first trees to grow up with the park rather than the burial ground it replaced. London planes are a seventeenth century hybrid of an American and an Asian parent, fast growing and tolerant enough of clipping to survive on a Dutch street. Three of them, standing together at well over a century old, anchor one corner of a park that covers barely a hectare.