The Plane at Sorghvliet

The estate was laid out around 1635 and was then called the Torensteedje. At the entrance there is still a castle farm, part of which dates from that founding period, which is close to four hundred years of the same buildings being used for the same purpose. The plane is nothing like that old. Banded 1840 to 1850, it belongs to the second half of the estate's life, when Dordwijk was being reworked the way most Dutch country places were in the nineteenth century: the formal geometry of the seventeenth century replaced with lawns, clumps and winding approaches, and single specimen trees planted where they would be seen from the house. That is what this tree is. Not part of an avenue and not part of a wood, but a chosen thing placed in a view, near the house called Sorghvliet. Planes were the fashionable choice for exactly that role: fast, huge, and with bark that keeps a pale flaking pattern all year, which makes one visible from a long way off across grass in any season. The register records the estate as visitable, but it is private ground south of the city, so it is worth checking access before you go.