The Beech Ensemble of Statenbolwerk

Four beeches grow together along the Statenbolwerk footpath near house number 26, planted in the 1850s as part of the same wave of planting that gave the walking park its villas a decade later. The Dutch monumental-tree register counts the four as a single entry, the row rather than any one trunk being what earned protection, the way Kenaupark's plane and cypress groups are registered a few hundred metres away. A relative did not survive. A single copper beech about 200 metres from this group, at Statenbolwerk 2, was reportedly around 222 years old when storm Eunice tore it down in February 2022; local coverage of the felling reported its wood was later turned into cutting boards and knives rather than left to rot. This ensemble is a different, ordinary green beech, a different register entry and a different age bracket, but the loss is a reminder that a storm does not check a tree's paperwork before it falls. The four stand in the open on public parkland, free to walk past at any time, a short stretch from the oak pair, the wingnut and the Kenaupark cluster that make this corner of Haarlem's old fortification ring one of the densest on the whole page.