The Plane Trees of the Dordrechts Museum Garden

Three plane trees in the museum's garden have outlived every renovation the building around them has had, because they arrived first. The Dordrechts Museum opened in 1842 in the old Boterbeurs, one of the oldest museums in the Netherlands, founded by a group of the city's more public-spirited residents. The national tree register bands the planes to 1840 to 1850, which means they went into the ground within a few years of that opening rather than growing up around an institution already established. The museum's own account of its garden agrees, putting the planes at 100 to 200 years old and crediting them with having watched the whole of that development, and millions of visitors, walk past. Two later plantings followed: a chestnut avenue leading to the front door, and younger beeches nearer the garden gate (a separate entry on this page). The planes are the ones that were already there before any of it. No girth is on record for any of the three. Seeing them means buying a ticket: the garden sits inside the museum grounds rather than open to the street.