Alkmaar built its city walls and bastions in 1565 and, unlike almost every other Dutch town, did not flatten them. In 1870 the garden architect Louis Paul Zocher turned the surviving earthworks into a landscape park, so six of the fourteen trees here still stand on that rampart, including the thickest lime of the lot and a yew moved here by crane in 2018. Three more grow in the Alkmaarderhout, the city's old wood laid out from 1607, and three elms stand together against the wall of the Grote Kerk.
0 / 14 visités à Alkmaar
1
The Lime by the Mill of Piet
Common Lime (Tilia x europaea) · roughly 125 to 135 years, from the register's planting band of 1890 to 1900 · Bolwerk
The register says this is the thickest lime on the bastions, which is a small crown and a well-defined one, because the bastions are a closed set.
Alkmaar's walls and bastions were built in 1565, at the height of the fortification boom that preceded the revolt against Spain, and this is where the city's luck comes in: most Dutch towns pulled their earthworks down and sold the land, and Alkmaar largely did not. In 1870 Louis Paul Zocher, of the family that laid out half the parks in the country, converted the surviving works into a city park in the landscape style. Curved walks, water, planted slopes, all of it on a defensive earthwork.
The lime went in at the end of the nineteenth century, so it belongs to Zocher's park rather than to the fortress.
Bastion soil is a genuine advantage. It is deep, artificial and undisturbed, which is more than any street can offer, and that is part of why the biggest trees in this city are all standing on a rampart.
It is near the mill called the molen van Piet. In July the flowers are heavy and the whole slope smells of them.
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2
The Willow of the Veenbos
White Willow (Salix alba) · roughly 175 to 225 years, from the register's wide planting band of 1800 to 1850 · Grootschermer
A willow that reaches two centuries has almost always been cut, and cut hard, over and over.
White willow is a fast, soft, short-lived tree left to itself: it puts on height quickly, gets heavy, splits down the middle at forty or fifty years and collapses. The ones that get old are the ones that were pollarded, cut back to the same point on the trunk every three to eight years for the withies. Doing that keeps the crown light, keeps the tree from tearing itself apart, and produces the shape everybody recognises from a Dutch polder: a short fat trunk, usually hollow, with a mop of thin straight rods on top.
So the age band of 1800 to 1850 on this tree is really a record of how many times somebody came back with a saw.
It stands in the Veenbos in an old polder at Grootschermer, north of the city, in exactly the landscape the species belongs to: peat, ditches, water at the surface, and no shelter at all.
Go in winter. A pollarded willow in a flat wet polder under a low sun is one of the sights this country actually does better than anywhere else.
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3
The Plane of the Alkmaarderhout
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 165 to 175 years, from the register's planting band of 1850 to 1860 · Alkmaarderhout
The city decided to plant this wood in 1607, which makes it older than most of what Europeans think of as parks.
What followed was not peaceful. Part of the Hout was cut down again during the siege of Alkmaar in 1672, the disaster year, when the Dutch Republic was attacked from three sides at once and a besieged town needed wood far more than it needed shade. From the middle of the eighteenth century there are winding rococo lanes, which are still traceable. Most of the trees standing here now are twentieth century, from when Leonard Springer made a design for the whole wood and the deer park was built.
This plane, banded 1850 to 1860, is older than that and is now the oldest tree in the Alkmaarderhout, a position it inherited last summer. The beech that held it, nearly seven metres round, came down in the Poly storm of 2023.
It stands between the flower clock and the music garden on the Wilhelminalaan.
Bark flaking in cream and olive, big lobed leaves, and hard spiky seed balls hanging on their stalks through the winter.
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4
The Elm of the Munnikenbolwerk
Dutch Elm (Ulmus x hollandica) · roughly 135 to 145 years, from the register's planting band of 1880 to 1890 · Bolwerk
Any old elm in the Netherlands is a survivor, and this one has had about a century and a half of chances to die.
Dutch elm disease is named after the Dutch scientists who identified the fungus in the 1920s, not after the country's elms, though those suffered as badly as any. The first wave killed a great many trees between the wars. The second strain, far more aggressive, arrived in the 1970s and took most of what was left, emptying avenues across the whole country in a decade. It spreads through bark beetles and through root grafts between neighbouring trees, which is why lines of elms died in sequence and isolated ones sometimes did not.
Standing alone on a bastion behind a cultural centre is, in that light, a good address.
It was planted between 1880 and 1890 on the Munnikenbolwerk, one of the 1565 works that Zocher turned into park in 1870.
The leaf tells you: distinctly lopsided at the base, one side starting lower on the stalk than the other. And elms come into leaf late and hold on late, so this is often the last green thing on the bastion in November.
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5
The Plane of the Clarissenbolwerk
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 115 to 125 years, from the register's planting band of 1900 to 1910 · Bolwerk
Bastion, water, plane tree. It is a combination the Dutch nineteenth century arrived at repeatedly and it works every time.
The Clarissenbolwerk is one of the 1565 works, named for the Poor Clares whose convent stood nearby, and the moat that made it a defence is what now makes it a view. Zocher's 1870 conversion was built on exactly that logic: the water was already there and had already been shaped, so all a designer had to do was plant the banks and cut the paths.
The plane is from about 1900, a generation after the layout, and it was chosen for what a plane does by the water. The trunk is pale and mottled, so it reads clearly against dark water; the crown is broad enough to overhang; and the species does not mind a high water table, which most large trees do.
It is by the water near Zevenhuizen 23.
The reflection is the thing here. Go on a still morning early enough that the moat has not been disturbed, and look at the flaking bark twice, once up and once down.
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6
The Weeping Willow behind Alcmaria
Weeping Willow (Salix babylonica) · roughly 115 to 125 years, from the register's planting band of 1900 to 1910 · Victoriepark
The park is named after a victory, the monument was raised in 1876, and the tree behind it weeps. Somebody enjoyed that.
The Victoriepark dates from 1822, when the North Holland Canal was dug and the city moat between the Friesepoort and the Waterpoort was filled in. The design is probably by J. D. Zocher, of the same family as the man who reworked the bastions. The Victory monument went up in 1876, and in 1903 Leonard Springer laid out the park as it is now.
The willow is from roughly that Springer period, banded 1900 to 1910.
Weeping willow is one of the oldest ornamentals in cultivation and almost every one in Europe is a clone, propagated from cuttings for centuries, because the trees planted here are nearly all female and set no viable seed. A willow twig will root in a bucket of water, which is how a single tree became a continent's worth.
A hundred and twenty is old for the species. Go in March, when the branches turn yellow-green before the leaves come and the whole tree lights up for a fortnight.
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7
The Plane of the Walhuis Garden
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 135 to 145 years, from the register's planting band of 1880 to 1890 · De Rijp
De Rijp was a whaling and herring town on an island in a lake, and it got rich enough that the merchants' warehouses still stand.
This plane grows in the garden of the museum of Jan Boon junior, the last of a family of shipowners and traders. The museum occupies the Walhuis, a former warehouse of 1725, which stands behind what was Jan Boon's house. A merchant family, a warehouse, a house, a garden, and then nobody left to inherit any of it, which is how a private house becomes a museum.
The tree is later than the buildings, banded 1880 to 1890, so it belongs to the last generation of the family rather than to the trading years.
A plane in a small town garden grows differently from one on a boulevard. There is no competition and no pruning regime, so it spreads rather than reaching, and after a century and a half it tends to be far too large for the plot, which is exactly the effect worth going for.
De Rijp itself is worth the trip regardless. Wooden houses, a seventeenth century town hall, and a street pattern that has not moved.
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8
The Three Elms of the Grote Kerk
Dutch Elm (Ulmus x hollandica) · roughly 100 years · Bolwerken / city centre
The national register counts these three trees as one. They stand in a row against the flank of the Grote Kerk on the Kerkplein, planted together and listed together under a single number.
The church behind them went up between 1470 and 1518, on a raised sand ridge, which in this corner of Holland is the difference between solid ground and a building that slowly sinks into it. The elms are four centuries younger than the wall they lean toward. The register dates them to about 1920. The city's own 2017 list of monumental trees puts the same planting at 1910 to 1920. Nobody holds a planting record, so the honest answer is somewhere inside that decade.
A hundred years is a long run for a Dutch elm. The disease that emptied avenues across this country travels by bark beetle and by root graft from one trunk to the next, which makes a tight row of three the arrangement most likely to be lost as a set. These three were not. A diseased elm on the ramparts a few hundred metres away was taken down as recently as 2019.
The square they shade is now the forecourt of theater De Vest, so on most evenings there is a queue standing under them.
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9
The Weeping Silver Lime of Scheteldoekshaven
Weeping Silver Lime (Tilia tomentosa 'Pendula') · roughly 90 years · Bolwerken / Geest
In a strong wind this tree changes colour. The underside of a silver lime's leaf is covered in fine white felt, which is what tomentosa means, so one gust turns a green crown pale grey and the next turns it back.
This one is the weeping form, Tilia tomentosa 'Pendula', and both the national register and the city's own 2017 list of monumental trees name the cultivar outright. The branches hang rather than reach, so the colour change runs from the top of the crown all the way down, like a curtain being shaken out.
It stands on the Bolwerk, the belt of old earthworks Alkmaar stopped defending and started walking on. The two sources agree on the decade as well as the species: it went into the ground somewhere between 1930 and 1940, which makes it a young tree with an unusual shape at the point the occupation arrived, and it has held the same spot on the rampart ever since.
Beyond that, nothing. The register's history field for this lime reads onbekend, unknown. Nobody has written down who planted it or why a weeping silver lime was the choice for this corner of the park. If you know, tell us and it goes on the page.
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10
The Relocated Yew of the Geestersingel
European Yew (Taxus baccata) · roughly 130 years · Geestersingel / Bolwerken
A 450-tonne crane picked this yew up and lifted it over the rooftops of Alkmaar.
Until 2018 it had spent something over a century out of sight. The city's 2017 list of monumental trees records it at Langestraat 115-117 with the note staat in de winkel, standing in the shop: a yew in a courtyard behind a shopfront, walled in on all sides, known to the people whose windows looked onto it and to very few others. That same list marks it rare and worth keeping.
Then the building was to be renovated and the tree was in the way. The usual outcome of that sentence is a chainsaw. Instead the municipality spent four years preparing to move it, and in the spring of 2018, with the work logged as starting on 18 March, the yew came out of its courtyard vertically, over the roofs, onto a lorry and across the city to a roundabout on the Geestersingel, where the register says it has room to grow for another hundred years.
Its age depends on who you ask. The 2017 list says 150 years, the register's planting band works out nearer 130, and both are estimates rather than counted rings.
One honest gap: beyond the register, that municipal list and the tree firm's own record of the job, we found no press account of the move. If you watched it, tell us.
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11
The Plane of the Munnikenbolwerk
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 100 years · Bolwerken / Munnikenbolwerk
This plane arrived half a century late for its own park.
The Munnikenbolwerk is one of the bastions Alkmaar threw up in 1565 and stopped needing long before Zocher turned the whole belt into a landscape park in 1870. The register is blunt about where this tree sits in that sequence: its planting is dated some fifty years after the design was finished, and the city's 2017 list of monumental trees bands it between 1920 and 1930. So it is not one of the founding trees. It was put in by people who inherited somebody else's park and decided it needed another plane.
They chose well, which you can tell from the fact that it is still here a century later and that the building behind it has changed use more than once. It now stands behind the art lending library on Achter de Vest, about fifty metres from the old elm on the same bastion, which makes the pair a two minute walk.
One warning, because it catches people out. Alkmaar has a second monumental London plane on the same rampart belt, roughly 200 metres away over the water near Zevenhuizen 23, and that one is a generation older. Two planes, one rampart. This is the inland one, behind the building.
The city's list calls the species Platanus x hispanica and the register calls it Platanus x acerifolia. Same hybrid, different naming habit.
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12
The Plume Elm of Molenbuurt
Wych Elm 'Exoniensis' (Ulmus glabra 'Exoniensis') · roughly 130 years · Bolwerken / Munnikenbolwerk
The national register files this tree in the bucket marked ordinary Dutch elm. The heading on its own entry in that same register says Pluimiep, plume elm, which is not the same thing at all.
The city's 2017 list of monumental trees settles the question by being specific: Ulmus glabra 'Exoniensis', the Exeter Elm, a cultivar of wych elm that grows narrow and upright with a crowded, congested crown instead of the wide vase most elms make. The Dutch name is a description of that shape. Both lists give the same address and the same planting decade, 1890 to 1900, so this is one tree carrying two names rather than two trees. We have gone with the more specific one, and you should know that the sources disagree.
They disagree on the date too, mildly. The register's history note guesses the tree belongs to the founding period of the park, when Zocher converted Alkmaar's 1565 ramparts into a landscape in 1870, while the planting band in the same file points two decades later. Nobody wrote it down at the time.
What is not in doubt is the survival. A hundred and thirty years is an extraordinary innings for any elm in the Netherlands, and this one has stood the whole time on the rampart behind the cultural centre, about seventy metres from the bastion's other old elm.
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13
The Copper Beech of the Hertenkamp
Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea) · roughly 120 years · Alkmaarderhout / Westerhoutpark
Storm Poly came through Alkmaar on 5 July 2023 and felled more than five hundred trees in an afternoon, with roughly two hundred more damaged badly enough to matter. One casualty was a copper beech in this same park, thirty metres or so away near the flower clock, cut down now to a stump about four metres tall. This beech, its near neighbour and near-twin, is the one that stood.
Only the national register names it, and only in a single line: it probably dates, the register says, from the Springer period, without a firmer date than that. The Alkmaarderhout itself is one of the oldest public parks in the Netherlands, laid out in 1607 and rebuilt into its present form by the landscape architect L.A. Springer around 1900 to 1903, the same years the deer park beside it, the Hertenkamp, was established. So the register is placing this tree at the edge of that rebuilding rather than dating it outright.
Beyond that one line, nothing: no planting record, no newspaper mention, just the fact that it survived a storm that took its neighbour down. If you know more about it, tell us.
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14
The Horse Chestnut behind Koekenbier
Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) · roughly 120 years · Alkmaarderhout / Westerhoutpark
The national register lists this horse chestnut with almost nothing beside it: no planting date, no note on its history, the field left onbekend, unknown. What is fixed is where it stands, about twenty-five metres into the trees behind restaurant Koekenbier, off the Kennemerstraatweg, on the edge of the Alkmaarderhout.
The register bands its age at roughly a century and a quarter without saying how that figure was reached, which would put its planting close to the years around 1900 when the landscape architect L.A. Springer rebuilt the park into its present form. That is inference rather than record, and the register does not claim otherwise.
A horse chestnut this size has gone through the same year over and over regardless of what got written down: white candle-shaped flower spikes standing through the crown in May, spiked green conkers splitting on the ground by October. None of that is recorded for this particular tree, only for the species in general.
It stands roughly a hundred metres from the park's copper beech and about 300 metres from its oldest recorded plane, part of the same walk through the Westerhoutpark. If you know more about it, tell us.
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