The Plane of the Huis van Gijn Garden

The museum that owns this plane and the national register that protects it are twenty years apart on when it went into the ground. The register describes a sizeable tree from 1860, more than four metres round the trunk, with knob-like burrs swelling along the stem and its condition rated fair. The museum's own garden page says the plane, and the maple standing near it, were probably planted around 1840, which would put them here before the Van Gijn family arrived at Nieuwe Haven 30 in 1864. Neither source shows its working, so the age stays broad: somewhere between roughly 165 and 185 years. Whichever date is right, the tree has spent its entire life inside one walled town garden a few streets back from the water, through the family's fifty-eight years in the house, through two world wars, and through the decades since the place became a museum. Four metres of trunk is a lot of tree for a garden this size, and the reward for the ticket is unusual. The museum has put a terrace underneath it, so the visit is sitting down and looking up rather than standing at a fence. Adult entry runs to about 14 euro, and the plane is at the back of the house.