What is the oldest tree in Enschede?
The oldest tree in Enschede is the oak on 't Zeggelt, in the Lasonder-Zeggelt district, which the national register places in a planting band of 1750 to 1800, so between about 225 and 275 years old. It has a name of its own in the city, De Eik op 't Zeggelt, and it stands in public planting rather than on any estate, which is unusual here: almost every other old tree in Enschede is a survivor of a nineteenth century textile family's grounds. The register gives it a coordinate to six decimal places, which is the sort of precision that means somebody stood at the trunk with a receiver rather than pointing at an address.
Ages here come from the Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen, which records a planting decade rather than a year, so every age on this page is a band and none is narrowed to look precise. The register is the 2024 edition and is the single source for these trees, which is why they are all flagged. The giant sequoia in the Ledeboerpark is the exception worth naming: the register cites a document in the archive of the Twente textile families recording correspondence in 1866 between H. J. van Heek and the garden architect D. Wattez about the price of a Wellingtonia, on an invoice for planting around 't Wageler in 1865. That is a documented purchase rather than an estimate, and it is why this page can be more confident about that tree than about any other on it. Where a pin is marked approximate we know the grounds and not the trunk.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.