The Plane, Lime and Silver Maple of Bastion Vught

Three monumental trees, a plane, a lime and a silver maple, stand within forty metres of each other at Bastion Vught, one of only three bastions to survive from Den Bosch's ring of 17th-century fortifications largely intact. Dutch States Army troops breached this exact stretch of wall during the 1629 siege that ended Spanish control of the city, and the site kept its military role for another two and a half centuries before the 1874 law that downgraded fortifications nationwide reduced the walls and freed the ground for parkland, the same shift that turned Bastion Oranje into a park across town. The three trees now anchor that park. The plane is the largest by trunk girth at just over four metres, the lime takes up the most room with its crown, and the silver maple, a species chosen for fast growth rather than longevity, has still reached a comparable size in the same roughly one hundred years. All three are sourced to the municipality's own monumental-tree register rather than a second independent account, honestly flagged here, though the register's coordinates place them precisely on the bastion itself.