The Copper Beech at the Bandstand

A copper beech planted in 1822 was an early one, and in a public park it was very early indeed. The purple form of the common beech was still a rarity at that date. It occurs naturally as an occasional mutation and had been propagated by grafting in European nurseries for perhaps sixty years, mostly for private estates and botanic collections. Putting one at the centre of a municipal park in the IJssel floodplain, in a replanting made to repair the damage of an occupation, was a choice with some ambition in it. It sits centrally, near the bandstand, which is exactly where a designer would place the darkest tree available: the focal point of the composition, seen from every path. Two hundred years on it is doing the job at a scale nobody planned. A mature copper beech is a solid dark mass, and this one anchors the middle of a park that is otherwise green, open and flat. The last week of October, when the purple burns through to copper and the whole park briefly reorganises itself around it. Failing that, April, for the translucent red of the new leaves.