The Pollarded Lindens of the Pepergasthuis

Ten of these eleven lindens are hollow, and they are still standing because somebody bolted them back together in the 1980s. The tie rods and the healed scars of that surgery are still visible on the trunks. The national register dates the planting to a band between 1830 and 1840, which puts the ten originals at around 190 years old; the eleventh is a replacement. That date rests on the register alone, with no second source to corroborate it. They fill the courtyard of the Pepergasthuis on Peperstraat, an almshouse founded in 1405 and also called the Sint Geertruidsgasthuis. The trees are centuries younger than the institution around them, and they have been cut into shape for their whole lives, trained in leivorm and pollarded back year after year. That is what a 190-year-old linden looks like when it has never been allowed to grow into a full-sized one. What they have mostly witnessed is the survival of the almshouse itself. In 2019 the complex was lined up for sale to a private investor. After opposition from the city and the residents the sale was called off, the housing corporation kept the 29 dwellings in social rent, and the lindens went on being pruned. People still live around this courtyard. It is open daily, roughly nine until six, and the right way to see it is quietly.